Cane and Abe

by James Grippando

  I knew it was a joke, and maybe I should have appreciated the attempt at humor, but it didn’t work for me, and I sensed that she regretted it.

  “No,” I said. “That’s definitely not going to happen.”

  A minute passed. I wondered if she had more to say. She didn’t.

  “Good night, Abe.”

  “Good night.”

  There was no kiss. I rolled onto my side and really tried to find sleep. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t clear my head and disengage. The air conditioner went through another cycle. Ten minutes or more passed. I shifted onto my left side, glancing at Angelina as I rolled over.

  She was still on her back. Her eyes were open.

  I wondered if her mind was so busy that, try as she might, she just couldn’t close them. Or was she dead tired and fighting to keep them open, waiting for me to fall asleep first?

  I breathed in and out and wished the night would end.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  At 5:30 a.m. something woke me. I sat up in bed and listened. I was certain that I’d heard a noise in the living room. Angelina was still asleep. I slid out of bed, walked quietly down the hall, and entered the living room. With sunrise more than an hour away, it was dark inside the house, and the windows were black with night. I listened for that noise again but heard nothing.

  A crisp knock on the door startled me.

  I checked through the peephole and saw a woman on my front porch. She was holding a microphone. Behind her was a man with a camera resting on his shoulder. It was the same Eyewitness News team that had interviewed me on Saturday.

  You gotta be kidding me.

  She knocked again. I didn’t dare open the door. I was tempted to sneak out the back and turn the hose on her. Instead, I got my phone from the charger and tapped out a text message. I chose my words carefully, making sure that no matter how she tried to slice it up for her report, she would be the one to look like an ass:

  Thank you for coming by our house at 5:30 a.m. Like most people, we are asleep at 5:30 a.m. Please be off our property no later than 5:31 a.m. so that I may return to sleep by 5:32 a.m. Otherwise, I will call the police at 5:33 a.m. Once again, thank you for your predawn concern and consideration.

  That would do it. I hit send, gave it a minute to transmit, and then watched through the peephole as she read it. She was required to leave once told to do so. It was the law, and I was a prosecutor. She texted back something along the lines of Please, pretty please, I’m a nice person, which I read as, My razor-sharp claws come out only if you’re stupid enough to open the door. I didn’t bite. She wedged her business card into the doorframe—Oh, yeah, I will definitely call you, lady—and left with her crew.

  I returned to the bedroom. Angelina had slept right through the knocking, which surprised me, until I noticed the molded wax earplugs. They were for swimming laps, and with that watertight seal she probably would have kept right on sleeping even if the news team had used shock grenades and a battering ram.

  I, however, was officially wide awake. I decided to let her sleep. I took a quick shower and dressed for the office, but I didn’t feel like going in so early. I needed a diversion, a person I could talk to about something other than Tyla Tomkins, Cutter, and, frankly, Angelina. Only one such person fit the bill, and it just so happened that he was also the only guy on earth who would be happy to see me before 6:30 a.m. I backed my car out of the garage, waved as I passed the Eyewitness News team on the street, and drove to the nursing home. Luther had already eaten breakfast and was sitting outside in the courtyard, tearing off pieces of leftover wheat toast and feeding the pigeons.

  “Now don’t fight,” he said. “Can’t we all just get along?”

  Good advice for the birds. Good advice for humans. “Rodney King couldn’t have said it better,” I said as I approached.

  Luther probably didn’t catch my allusion to the 1992 LA riots, but he was glad to see me. I told him not to get up, and he told me not to worry. It was the worn-out joke between me and an old man who was almost too frail to stand, but it still made me smile. I took a seat on the bench beside him.

  “Why you up so early?” he asked.

  “The McRib is back. I wanted to be first in line.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “You are definitely the funniest white man I know.”

  We talked about him for a few minutes, and I heard all about the new physical therapist with the nice smile and soft hands. Then he told me about a friend of mine who had come to visit him.

  “One of my friends?” I asked.

  “Victoria,” was her name. “Victoria Santos.”

  I was about to explode. This was the second time Santos had pulled this stunt, first with Angelina’s mother and now with Samantha’s father.

  “What did you two talk about?”

  “Me, mostly. Nice girl, but she sure asks a lot of questions.”

  “What about?”

  He tossed another piece of bread to the birds. They climbed all over each other in the scramble for it. “She wanted to know about my days cuttin’ sugarcane.”

  I closed my eyes and opened them slowly, trying to keep my anger at bay. “Did J.T.’s name come up?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Yes, it did.”

  “How so?”

  “I can’t remember exactly how, Abe. Honestly, I tuned her out at that point. She was asking me things like, ‘Are you sure J.T. never cut sugarcane?’ And, ‘Did you pass on the tradition to your son?’ Kind of like asking Obama if anyone in his family kept up the tradition of pickin’ cotton.”

  I would have laughed under different circumstances. But the notion that J.T. fancied himself a sugarcane cutter wasn’t just idle curiosity. It fit perfectly with Santos’ theory behind the murder of Tyla Tomkins.

  Luther signaled for one of the nurses, and she started toward us from across the courtyard. “Sorry, Abe,” he said. “I gotta pee.”

  “That’s okay. Time for me to go anyway.”

  We said good-bye, and I went quickly to my car. Part of me wanted to drive straight to Santos’ apartment and bang on her door, Eyewitness News style. Nothing good would come of that. Instead I called Rid. He was running on a treadmill, which struck me as an interesting metaphor, and breathing heavily on the other end of the line.

  “Did you know what Santos did now?”

  “Abe,” he said, his speech halting from the run. “We said we weren’t . . . going to talk about this anymore.”

  “She went to see Luther.”

  The treadmill stopped whining in the background. I had his attention.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because he’s an old cane cutter, and now Santos wants to prove that J.T. and I cooked up a plan to kill Tyla Tomkins and make it look like Cutter did it.”

  “She shouldn’t drag the old man into this.”

  “She shouldn’t drag me and J.T. into it either. Rid, you gotta help me out here.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Tell me what she was looking for in my house yesterday.”

  “Abe,” he said, groaning.

  “Come on, Rid. This shit has gone far enough. I’ve been strip-searched, I sat for a polygraph, she searched J.T.’s house, she searched my house without a warrant, she ambushed my father-in-law in a nursing home, and that’s just the stuff I know about. What’s Santos gonna do next, exhume Samantha’s body?”

  He paused, but I could almost feel him coming around. Then he gave it to me.

  “She’s looking for evidence that Angelina is a smoker.”

  “She doesn’t smoke.”

  “A closet smoker.”

  “What the hell is this about?”

  He told me about the glowing orange dot in the parking lot across the street from the funeral home on the night of Tyla’s memorial service.

  “That sounds like something a serial killer would do,” I said. “Case the funeral home of one of his victims.”

  “She doesn’t think it was Cutter.
”

  “She thinks it was Angelina?”

  “Let’s just say she doesn’t think you and Angelina have a healthy relationship.”

  “No, I need more than that. I need to know what Santos is thinking, Rid. Does she see Angelina as some kind of crazy stalker wife who followed me to Tyla’s memorial service?”

  “Something made her smash a beer bottle against the door after throwing you out of the house, Abe. And let’s not forget the broken nose.”

  I didn’t want to get into that again with Rid. “Okay. This is helpful. Anything else you can tell me?”

  “Just one thing,” said Rid. “This is really the last time we talk about this, Abe.”

  He hung up. I put my phone away. I’d heard the finality in his voice, and he’d meant it: this would be the last favor.

  I hoped I wouldn’t need another.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Angelina was awake and in the kitchen when I got home. The media vans were no longer outside our house. I wondered if Angelina had stolen my idea.

  “What’d you do, turn the hose on Eyewitness News?”

  She was wearing her bathrobe with her wet hair wrapped in a towel, having just showered. “Jeffrey took care of them,” she said as she poured a cup of coffee.

  “How?”

  She stirred in a pink pack of sweetener. “I told him what networks were out there. He called the producers and promised an exclusive first interview with me if their van disappeared.”

  “You can’t promise exclusive first interviews to everyone.”

  She tasted her coffee and shrugged. “Jeffrey can. It worked.”

  “When are these exclusive interviews supposed to take place?”

  “Four o’clock, in plenty of time to air on the evening news. Unfortunately, I’m coming down with the flu at three thirty.”

  I was getting tired of this game. “Get dressed. I want us to have a meeting with your lawyer.”

  “What about?”

  “I want to refinance our mortgage. Come on, Angelina, can we just go?”

  “Sor-ree.” She took her coffee into the bedroom and closed the door. I called her lawyer’s office and set up a meeting with Winters for 8:30. I could not imagine why it took Angelina so long to figure out what to wear, but we didn’t leave the house until 8:15. I managed to get there on time. Somehow, so did Angelina’s mother.

  “Margaret? What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Jeffrey tells me whenever there’s a meeting, since I’m paying the bills.”

  “Hi, Mommy.”

  “Hello, sweetheart,” Margaret said as mother and daughter embraced.

  I was getting really tired of this game. “Margaret, I understand that it was your idea to hire a lawyer, but Angelina and I will pay the bill.”

  “I want to pay,” she said.

  “No. We’ll pay. But even if you were paying, that doesn’t make you the client, and this morning, the lawyer is meeting only with his client and her husband.”

  Margaret took a few seconds to compute what I was saying. “So . . . you want me to wait out here?”

  “Please.”

  “Well. Okay. I guess that’s okay.”

  “It’s okay, Mommy.”

  “Have a good meeting then. I’ll be right out here. If you need me.”

  The receptionist escorted Angelina and me to Winters’ office. He was on the telephone but waved us in. We took seats in the armchairs facing his desk. He wrapped up the call but didn’t come around his desk to greet us. He seemed under the gun and dispensed with the usual pleasantries.

  “Sorry to be rush-rush, but I’m picking a jury at nine thirty,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  “Abe thinks our mortgage rate is too high. Don’t you, honey?”

  Right back at me.

  “He what?” asked Winters.

  “I have some concerns about Agent Santos. There are really two—”

  “Sorry, Abe,” said Winters. “I hate to interrupt, but can you excuse us?”

  “Excuse you?”

  “Yes. Would you step out for a few minutes? Before the three of us talk, I’d like to have a word with my client.”

  Man, was I tired of this game. “Fine. Have a word. Have a paragraph. Have a whole fucking dictionary.”

  “Abe, stop it,” said Angelina.

  “I’ll be outside,” I said as I crossed the room. I closed the door behind me and continued down the hall. I was in no mood to wait, and with each step toward the lobby I felt more like continuing straight to the elevator. Margaret spotted me. She was seated on the black leather couch in front of the flat-screen television.

  “That was a short meeting,” she said.

  “Yeah. Shorter than planned.”

  “Well, just because you pay the bill doesn’t mean you’re the client.”

  I pushed the elevator call button six times. If it didn’t come soon, I figured I’d just jump out the window. Margaret sank deeper into the couch and sighed.

  “The TV news people sure aren’t warming up to Angelina’s video,” she said.

  The bell chimed as the elevator doors opened. I let it go and walked toward Margaret. “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “They’ve been picking it apart all morning.” She switched the channel back to Eyewitness News morning edition and turned up the volume. “Look, they’re still talking about it.”

  I walked around the table for a better look at the TV, careful not to knock over the priceless work of art made out of coat hangers and Ping-Pong balls. The former US attorney for the Southern District of Florida was the legal-know-it-all du jour on the local morning news show.

  “In theory,” he said, “law enforcement could seek reimbursement of all costs of this investigation. But that would be very unlikely, in my view, if law enforcement believes what Angelina Beckham is telling us, that she ran out of a legitimate fear that she was about to be a serial killer’s next victim.”

  “Do you believe her?” asked the interviewer.

  “I think the verdict is still out. A YouTube video isn’t going to do it. She and everyone around her will have to answer some very tough questions.”

  Margaret rose from the couch. “I can’t watch this anymore,” she said as she stepped out of the lobby and headed down the hallway. I didn’t ask where she was going. The television had me riveted. It was a good thing that Margaret had left. The network was replaying Sunday evening’s news conference, Jake and Margaret’s plea for their daughter’s return. Jake had done all the talking, but my eyes were on Margaret. The first time I’d watched it, I’d wondered if Margaret was going to live through this. It wasn’t any easier to watch a second time.

  The receptionist came to me. “Mr. Winters is ready to see you now.”

  I followed her through the reception area and then stopped. The lobby area in Winters’ penthouse had more glass walls than a fun house, and I wanted to make sure I’d seen what I thought I’d seen. I was looking through three panes: a wall of beveled glass behind the receptionist, the glass door to the main conference room, and another glass door to a balcony off the conference room. Margaret was outside, on the balcony, surely unaware that I or anyone else was watching.

  I’d never known her to smoke, never smelled it on her. But she was lighting up a cigarette.

  Angelina’s mother was a closet smoker.

  I stood in the hallway and watched, imagining the glowing orange dot in the dark parking lot across the street from Tyla’s memorial service. She’d been watching me. Angelina’s mother had been watching me.

  “Mr. Beckham, are you all right?” asked the receptionist.

  “Yeah,” I said as we continued toward Winters’ office. “I will be.”

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  The receptionist tapped lightly on the door to Winters’ office and opened it. My phone rang as I was about to enter. The display read “Triple-A Storage.” I took the call, which was from the property manager.

  “Is this
Mr. Beckham?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I’m calling to advise you that I am about to open your storage unit.”

  “Why? Did I forget to pay the bill?”

  “No. The police are here with a search warrant.”

  My first thought was Santos. “What police?”

  “Miami-Dade.”

  “Put one of the officers on the line.”

  “They aren’t going to talk to you, dude. I already asked them to give you a call, but they don’t need you to be here. They don’t want you to be here. That’s the way these things work.”

  I knew that. “What are they looking for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s on the warrant.”

  “Look, I don’t get involved in the details. I just give my customers a heads-up in case they want to come over. Or get out of town.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be right there.” I hung up and stuck my head in the office. “Sorry, I gotta go.”

  “What?” said Winters.

  “Something came up.”

  “What’s this about?” asked Angelina.

  “I don’t have time to explain. Just stay here.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know. Have another word with your attorney. Start on the thesaurus. I really have to go.”

  I turned and ran down the hall, through the lobby to the elevator. A courier held the door open for me, and in three minutes I was down in the main lobby, through the revolving entrance doors, and in my car.

  The manager had said it was MDPD, and I believed him, but I was certain that Santos was somehow behind the search. I wasn’t sure how she would have found out about the storage unit. Perhaps it had come up in her visit with Luther. I dialed Santos from my car, but she didn’t answer. Rid didn’t take my call either. I drove faster, weaving between slower-moving cars in the morning traffic. I parked next to the squad cars outside the storage warehouse and ran upstairs to the fourth floor. The roll-up door to my unit was open. The search was in progress. Agent Santos was standing in the hallway, a tacit acknowledgment that she was operating outside her jurisdiction, the supervisor masquerading as an observer.