Cane and Abe

by James Grippando

  “That’s some good news,” said Ed.

  “Yeah. For us.”

  We kept walking. “By the way, Vernon Gallagher didn’t pan out.”

  “Vernon who?”

  “Remember? The Michael Phelps of cane cutting? The old cutter Tyla Tomkins might have been talking about in her message to you?”

  “Right, right.”

  “I really thought there was something fishy about that car accident that killed the state rep. Especially the way all the investigative records were sealed. But I talked to Conrad’s widow. It turns out that the Conrad family got the records sealed, not Big Sugar. Conrad was drunk as shit and driving too fast when he came up on the burning field. The fire jumped the road, and that was that. He crashed.”

  Ed was wandering so far off track that I could barely follow. “That’s a shame.”

  “My point is that I don’t think the car crash has anything to do with the crime that Tyla was trying to tell you about.”

  “Agreed. Let’s drop the whole thing.”

  “No, no, no,” he said, stopping me. “I didn’t mean we should give up. If Tyla was trying to tip you off about a crime committed by Cortinas Sugar, we definitely need to find out what it was.”

  “Ed, right now all I want to do is update my in-laws.” I started down the hall, walking faster. He kept up.

  “Hear me out on this, okay? I think the crime Tyla was trying to tell you about has something to do with the land deal that her law firm worked on.”

  My footfall struck the rubber mat, the doors opened automatically, and we continued outside. “The land deal?”

  “Four years ago Big Sugar cut a billion-dollar deal to sell farmland back to the state of Florida. It was way over market price, but the environmentalists went along with it because the plan was to retire all those acres from sugar production and return the Everglades to a natural state. But then Big Sugar got the politicians to lease the same land back to them for another twenty years of sugar production at some ridiculously low sweetheart rental rate. It’s outright thievery.”

  We were outside the building. I tried my phone. Zero bars. “Damn it.” I followed the sidewalk along the front of the building, searching for reception. The parking lot was around the corner. Ed kept stride.

  “So this land deal—”

  “Ed, enough,” I said, annoyed. “What does a land deal have to do with anything?”

  “Stay with me,” said Ed. “I’m sure no one has figured this out yet, but I can show you a map. This serial killer has dumped each of his Palm Beach victims in a cane field. So far, every single one of those fields is a leased-back parcel.”

  I stopped, incredulous. “Are you out of your mind? What do you think this is, The Da Vinci Code?”

  “Huh?”

  “Ed, I don’t want to hear about a sweetheart land deal.”

  “You’re missing the point. It all ties in with the serial killer. I think there’s a message here.”

  I walked faster still, but an absurd image came to mind of an old cartoon that my mentor had once taped to his door, until Carmen made him take it down: two detectives staring at a city map, push pins marking each crime scene, the dots spelling out “Fuck You,” and one detective asking the other, “You think there’s a pattern here?”

  I checked my phone. Still no reception. I needed to get around to the other side of the building. I kept walking.

  “Abe, are you listening to what I’m saying?”

  “Not anymore. I thought you came here out of friendship. Instead, you’re bending my ear about a lawsuit?”

  “We can nail these guys once and for all, Abe.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “Abe, you and me, a team. We can beat Big Sugar.”

  “That’s your thing, not mine, Ed.”

  “Make it your thing, damn it. Cutter isn’t the only murderer in town, you know. These sugar-baron bastards are killing the Everglades, and they’re getting away with it.”

  “Ed, I have bigger things on my mind, my wife is missing, and I honestly don’t give a shit!”

  I stopped cold. We had just rounded the corner of the building and nearly collided with a television news crew. An appalled reporter was staring right at me. I had been yelling, the part the reporter had heard was completely out of context, and the cameraman had heard it, too. I was about to explain, but she wouldn’t give me a chance, at least not off camera. At the snap of her fingers, the video was rolling.

  “Excuse me, sir,” she said. “Aren’t you Abe Beckham?”

  The microphone was in my face. The red eye of the camera was staring at me.

  Another man might have learned his lesson from the one-word lie in Carmen’s office, the one about how long it had been since my last encounter with Tyla Tomkins. But I was desperate for a quick out.

  “No,” I said, and I hurried to my car.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I couldn’t go home. Not tonight. My house was still a crime scene, and the investigators would return in the morning. If I planned on being there, I needed sleep. I headed for J.T.’s apartment.

  I called Angelina’s parents. Her father was relieved, but he asked the obvious question:

  “So, where do they think she is?”

  “We have to keep looking.”

  “I know we have the tip line through the police, but I want to offer a reward to go with it. You know, anyone with information please call us. No questions asked. Maybe . . . how much do you think? Twenty-five thousand? Fifty thousand? I don’t know. How do people come up with these numbers?”

  How indeed. Is it what someone’s worth? What the family can afford? Another question with no answer. “A reward is a good idea, Jake. We’ll figure out the amount in the morning.”

  I told him not to give up hope, he told me the same, and we hung up. I slapped myself across the face six or seven times on the drive down the turnpike just to stay awake. They didn’t hurt as much as the next call. I answered only because I thought the Palm Beach area code could have been from someone on the task force. Somehow that TV reporter had hunted down my cell number.

  “Mr. Beckham, I know that was you.”

  My first instinct was to hang up, but damage control had its place. “I apologize. That was very rude of me, but this is a difficult time. Please respect my privacy.”

  “I heard what you said. I’d like to give you an opportunity to explain.”

  I needed to be smart here. “I tell you what, Ms. . . . what’s your name?”

  “Heather. Heather Hunt.”

  Of course it is. “I love my wife, and I’m doing everything humanly possible to find her. What you heard was completely out of context. Now, if you promise to leave me alone, I promise that the next time I have an update for the media, you’ll be the first person I call.”

  “Mr. Beckham, I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but your wife is a Miami story. I want to talk to you about Cortinas Sugar.”

  “What?”

  “After you ran off, literally, Mr. Brumbel explained what you meant when you said you didn’t give a you-know-what. He said that right before Tyla Tomkins was killed she contacted you about criminal activity and a cover-up at Cortinas Sugar.”

  Damn it, Ed. From the get-go, I’d made it clear to him that Tyla’s message was confidential.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you about that.”

  “Mr. Brumbel gave me your cell and said you’d be happy to explain.”

  Shit, Ed! “No, I can’t.”

  “So you really don’t give a S-H-I-T about a possible connection between Tyla Tomkins and criminal activity at Cortinas Sugar?”

  “I really have to go now. I’m sorry, Hunter.”

  “Heather. Heather Hunt.”

  “I’m driving down the turnpike at seventy miles per hour, I’m tired, and I’m talking on the phone. This is dangerous. Good night.”

  She called right back, but I ignored it. I fumbled with the phone to dial Ed. Yes, he’d
come out after midnight to support me, and perhaps I could have found a more delicate way to say that finding Angelina was a higher priority than suing Big Sugar. But blabbering to a reporter about Tyla and me was pretty harsh payback.

  The call went to voice mail. My mind suddenly filled with thoughts of Ed on the other line, feeding Heather Hunt more quotes about Tyla, me, and whatever lawsuit he was trying to build against Cortinas Sugar. I left a message: “Ed, I trusted you to keep it confidential that Tyla may have been a whistleblower. Please, not another word to the media. You’re compromising a homicide investigation. That’s all I have to say.” I put the phone away, but my anger simmered all the way back to Miami. Maybe some of it was misdirected.

  There was still my brother-in-law’s mess to deal with.

  It was one thirty in the morning when I reached J.T.’s complex. I flew over three sets of speed bumps, pulled my car into the same spot I’d parked in when Samantha and I had lived here, and dropped my keys in the same dish by the front door. Two trips to and from Palm Beach in the last sixteen hours, and that had been the easy part of my day. I was exhausted, but sleep was not my first order of business. The Cortinas connection had me wound up, but I couldn’t waste energy on it. I had to stay focused. I still wanted to hear J.T.’s version of his conversation with Agent Santos, and I didn’t care if I was waking him up in the middle of the night to get it. I went into his room, switched on the lamp, and nudged him till he woke.

  “Did you tell Agent Santos that Angelina hits me?”

  He blinked, trying to get his bearings. “What?”

  I peeled back the blankets, pulled him up from his pillow, and sat him on the edge of the mattress, facing me. He was wearing his usual basketball shorts and T-shirt. I repeated my question, trying not to sound too accusatory, but at this stage of the game I was losing my bedside manner. His eyes were adjusting to the light, but that wasn’t the only reason for the slow response. Finally he answered.

  “I might have,” he said.

  “J.T, why would you do that?”

  “I—uh.” His leg got restless, his right heel bouncing up and down on the floor like a jackhammer. The SCRAM bracelet rattled on his ankle.

  “I’m not going to get mad. I promise.”

  Both his legs were going now. The bed was actually squeaking. I needed to back off a bit.

  “J.T., breathe for me, okay? I want you to relax and tell me why you told Agent Santos that Angelina hits me.”

  He inhaled through his mouth, exhaled through his nose. It seemed backward to me, but so did most of J.T.’s world.

  “I was just . . . just trying to help.”

  “Help? Help who?”

  “You.”

  “Me? How was that going to help me?”

  “She was trying to get me to say that you hit her. She didn’t believe me when I said no. So—I don’t know, Abe. I just went too far. You know, people push me, and I push back. So it was like, Oh yeah, you think Abe hits Angelina? That’s not only bullshit. It’s double bullshit. Angelina hits him. In your face, lady.”

  In a weird J.T. way, it made sense. He was breathing so hard that there was a whistling through his nose on each exhale. “J.T., don’t hyperventilate.”

  His breathing slowed, but the restless legs continued.

  “It’s nice that you want to help me,” I said. “But it doesn’t help to say that Angelina hit me. Agent Santos will turn that around and say that this was a violent relationship, Angelina hit me one too many times, and I finally hit back, and Angelina ended up missing. Or worse.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “No, J.T.! Shit, no!”

  “Don’t yell at me, Abe!”

  He sprang to his feet. I recoiled defensively, but J.T. went right past me. His body was simply responding to that uncontrollable urge to pace the floor. Innocent enough, but it brought back Angelina’s words to me. He scares me, Abe.

  “J.T., have you been taking your pills every day?”

  “Uh-huh, yeah.” He was in constant motion, back and forth at the foot of the bed, from one end of the room to the other.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Don’t call me no liar, Abe.”

  “I’m just asking. Because I know you want to help me, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, but his words were just grunts.

  “J.T., the best way you can help me right now is to take care of yourself. Can you do that for me?”

  “Wanna help, wanna help, wanna help. That’s all.”

  “J.T., can you promise me that?”

  “I just wanted to help, that’s all I was trying to do, but now I fucked up everything, and no one will ever want my help again. I should have just said no, go away, I can’t talk now, see you later, bitchy FBI woman who I caught looking up my shorts at my black dick.”

  I went to him, but he was pacing too furiously. If I didn’t do something fast, he’d be skipping across the room, and as funny as people thought that sounded, there was nothing funny about it.

  “I shouldn’t have said nothin’, Abe!”

  “Don’t worry about it. I need you to calm down, okay?”

  “I’m just stupid.”

  “J.T., come on.”

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he said, slapping his forehead with each stupid.

  “J.T., stop it!”

  I was so loud that I’d startled myself, but it didn’t faze J.T. He dropped to the floor and started working at the ankle bracelet. “We gotta get this thing off me, Abe.”

  “Don’t!”

  “I can’t wear this shit no more!”

  This was trouble we didn’t need. I didn’t need. Instinctively, I lunged toward him before we had a swarm of squad cars in the parking lot and the police beating on the door. My foot caught the corner of the bed and I fell forward. My reflex was to throw a stiff arm to break my fall, and I banged my tricep so hard on the bedpost that I practically saw stars.

  “Damn it, J.T.!”

  He didn’t hear, didn’t even notice me. My arm was killing me, but the problem was the ankle bracelet.

  “Got to get this fucking thing off me, Abe!”

  I was desperate. I had one card to play, one I’d been holding for nineteen months. I wasn’t sure I could actually pull it off, but if ever there would be a time to try, this was it.

  I started singing.

  I was off key, and my voice cracked, partly because I was a terrible singer, mostly because I wasn’t doing justice to a special memory. It was a song that I’d heard Samantha sing to her brother in bad situations, some worse than this. Samantha had a beautiful voice. It was no surprise that it had worked for her. I was doing the best I could.

  “Can you sing it with me, J.T.?”

  I sang the first verse alone, lacking the power the composer had intended, sounding not at all like the choir at J.T. and Samantha’s old church. But it was enough to make J.T. stop pacing and sit on the edge of the mattress. I didn’t know the second verse, so I started over, and J.T. joined me.

  God gives me a rainbow

  after a storm.

  All winter God tells me

  It’ll get warm.

  Through hard times

  His Grace

  In good times

  His Grace

  Makes me grateful, so grateful.

  I’m grateful He’s great.

  Be grateful.

  We sang it twice. J.T. went quiet. No more pacing, no restless legs. The room was oddly still, a rarity in my life with J.T., and I savored it. “Try to go back to sleep,” I told him.

  J.T. climbed into the bed and slid under the sheets. I switched off the lamp and started toward the door.

  “Abe?” he called in the darkness.

  I stopped in the doorway.

  “What are you grateful for?” he asked.

  The question cut right through me, sliced me in two. Half of me inside a room that was thick with memories of Samantha. Half out there, somewhere, searching for
Angelina.

  “Good night, J.T.,” I said as I closed the door.

  I made up the couch and lay in the darkness. Even with J.T.’s bedroom door closed, I could hear him snoring. But that wasn’t what kept me awake. I couldn’t close my eyes without going back to the hospital. I closed them anyway.

  It had been a hot summer morning, but Samantha was unaware. We were in a hospital in name only. It was hospice care, and even though everyone meant well, my head was going to explode if I heard the words “make her comfortable” one more time. Samantha had been in and out of sleep brought on by painkillers. I was half asleep myself, in the chair beside her bed, when her eyes opened.

  “Abe?”

  “What, honey?”

  She waved me closer. I leaned over the rail.

  “Promise me something,” she whispered.

  I thought it might be our Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw moment, our own personal Love Story, where my dying wife tells me that she wants me to remarry.

  “Anything,” I said.

  “Promise me that you will look after J.T.”

  I took her hand, her bony hand. “Okay.”

  She would have propped herself up on an elbow, but she lacked the strength. She looked straight into my eyes. “No, don’t just say okay. Tell it to me. Say, ‘Samantha, I promise you, I will look after J.T.’”

  I swallowed hard. I was trying not to squeeze her fingers too tightly, she seemed so fragile, but she was crushing mine with whatever strength she had left.

  “Samantha, I promise you I will look after J.T.”

  A peacefulness seemed to wash over her. She let go of my hand, settled into her pillow, and closed her eyes.

  It wasn’t the last thing I said to my wife. But I’m pretty sure—in fact, I’m certain—that those were the last words Samantha Vine ever heard.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I slept till seven. The music woke me.

  Be-e-e-e-e grateful. J.T. had the gospel revival choir version of our song blasting on the old CD player. It was Sunday morning indeed.

  My arm felt sore as I pushed myself up from the couch, but it was no big deal. I was lucky I hadn’t broken my neck, the way I had fallen. I checked my phone. I had eleven messages from Heather, Hunter, whatever her name was. I deleted all of them.