“Does your daughter know you’re here?” asked Jack.
Felipe crossed his legs, giving Jack an eyeful of noticeably yellowed toenails. The golf shirt and pressed slacks were perfectly appropriate, but too many men in Miami interpreted business casual to mean open-toe sandals.
“You mean here in your office, or that I came here to Miami?” asked Felipe.
“Both.”
“No to both,” said Bornelli.
“When is the last time you spoke?”
“Nine and a half years ago. At her mother’s funeral.”
“That was before Isa and Keith met?” asked Jack, trying to keep the timeline straight.
“Yes,” said Keith. “But we did send you an invitation to our wedding.”
“Did you personally put my invitation in the mail?” asked Bornelli.
“Not me personally. Isa took care of that.”
“I never received an invitation.”
It was possible that he was lying, but from the look on Keith’s face, Jack surmised that it was equally possible that Isa had lied about mailing it. Jack shifted gears, but only slightly. “Is it too personal to ask why you and your daughter stopped speaking to one another?”
“She hasn’t told you?” asked Bornelli.
“It would be helpful to hear your side of the story.”
“Well, aside from being too personal, your question is way outside the point of my visit.”
“That’s fine,” said Jack. “Then what brings you here?”
“I mean no disrespect to you, sir. But I must be direct: I do not approve of the lawyer my daughter has chosen to represent her.”
Keith chuckled nervously, but Jack knew immediately that the man was deadly serious. “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Jack, and he left it at that.
“I feel as though I should tell you why,” said Bornelli.
“I feel as though it doesn’t matter,” said Jack.
Bornelli continued nonetheless. “You probably know that I served in the Venezuelan Office of the General Consul here.”
“I heard,” said Jack.
“And for most of my term of service, the governor of Florida was, of course, Harry Swyteck.”
“He was elected twice, so there definitely would have been some overlap.”
“There was more than overlap,” said Bornelli. “Antagonism would be a better word. Perhaps even hostility.”
Governor Swyteck wasn’t of Cuban descent, but Jack’s mother had come to Miami as a teenager under “Operation Pedro Pan,” a humanitarian program under which thousands of Cuban parents—Jack’s abuela included—put their children on some of the last Miami-bound flights to leave Havana. Abuela’s plan was to meet up with her daughter later. She never did, and it took another thirty years for her to get out of Cuba and meet her grandson. Miami’s Cuban-exile community had seen no better friend in the governor’s mansion than Harry Swyteck.
“Seriously?” asked Jack. “You came here because my father was staunchly anti-Castro and anti-Chavez?”
“You minimize this,” he said, and there was a hint of anger in his tone. “But, yes, I am serious. I will not have my daughter represented by a lawyer whose last name is Swyteck.”
Jack moved forward in his chair. “Let me explain something, Mr. Bornelli. We’re not taking a vote on this. The selection of a lawyer is not up to you. It’s Isa’s decision.”
“And mine,” said Keith.
“No,” Jack said firmly. “Just Isa’s.”
Jack didn’t like rebuking Keith in front of Isa’s father, and Keith clearly didn’t like it either, but it needed to be said.
“I am only looking out for my daughter’s best interest,” said Bornelli.
Jack doubted it, but he chose to avoid further confrontation. “Your good intentions are irrelevant. Isa chose me. That’s the end of it.”
“I disagree,” said Bornelli, his voice taking on an even sharper edge. “It is my right to choose the lawyer who will put an end to the disgrace that my daughter has brought to the family name.”
“What disgrace?” asked Jack. “Your daughter is innocent until proven guilty.”
“I’m not talking about the murder of Gabriel Sosa.”
The words hit Jack like a mule kick. Keith appeared on the verge of eruption.
“Wait a minute,” said Jack, barely able to comprehend. “Are you suggesting that Isa disgraced your family because she was raped?”
Bornelli’s expression tightened. “Who says she was raped?”
“Isa does,” said Keith.
“Exactly,” said Bornelli.
“Fuck off,” said Keith, and Jack had to reach across like a boxing referee to keep him in his chair.
“All right, all right,” said Jack, trying to keep things calm. “At the risk of dignifying this discussion with a follow-up question, I’ll bite. Mr. Bornelli, do you have evidence that Isa wasn’t raped?”
Felipe paused, as if searching for the perfect response. “Whatever evidence I have, I will gladly share—with Isa’s new attorney. Now, I think I’ve made myself clear. I must be going,” he said, rising. “Gentlemen, it has been a pleasure. Thank you both for your time.”
There were no handshakes. Jack and Keith watched as he showed himself to the door and left the room.
“I should punch him in the fucking mouth,” said Keith.
“Let him go,” said Jack.
“He comes in here and tries to fire you. Then he calls my wife a liar to my face. What does he think—he owns Isa?”
“That’s not the right question,” said Jack.
Keith looked confused, and Jack clarified.
“The question is, does Isa think he owns Isa?”
Chapter 10
At four p.m. Jack paid a second visit to Isa at the detention center.
It was a quick walk from the state attorney’s office, where he’d spent a good chunk of the afternoon trying to work out a plea agreement—not for Isa, but for the owner of a neighborhood farmacia that had been driven out of business by the opening of “El Walmart” across the street. The landlord refused to let Jack’s client off the hook for five remaining years of rent, and now he stood accused of torching the building to get out of the lease. Jack had fought for no jail time, but there was only so much you could do for an amateur arsonist who’d got so close to the accelerant that he’d singed away his own eyebrows.
Jack and Isa sat alone at the table in the same windowless conference room where they’d first met. She wore her hair in a ponytail. Her fingernails, once beautifully manicured, had been clipped short for safety reasons, but the nail on her left index finger was much shorter than detention center policy required. She’d been chewing on it, Jack noted.
“I’m guessing that you never got the message to call me,” said Jack.
“No. I would have called if I did.”
“I wanted to talk to you because your father showed up unexpectedly at my office.”
She looked genuinely surprised. Jack gave her a quick summary of their conversation, and as the story progressed, it was hard to tell if she was more hurt or angry.
“He never did believe me.” Her gaze drifted away, and she shook her head slowly, as if still amazed. “My own father never believed I was raped.”
Jack gave her a minute to collect herself; it was still an obvious source of pain. “You mean from the very beginning?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about that.”
Her voice softened. “After it happened, I didn’t know what to do.”
Jack could have asked her to back up—he needed to know more about “it”—but the fact that even after all these years she still referred to the rape as “it” told him how difficult this was for her. For present purposes, he would let her skip over the “it” and start with the “after.”
“Where were you?”
“My dorm room. Alone. Gabriel left me there on the floor. I must have lain there for, I don’t know, an hour. May
be more. I felt so worthless—like a thing. I didn’t want to exist. I wrapped myself in a blanket and couldn’t stop crying.”
“Where was your roommate?”
“She’d gone home for the weekend. We weren’t really friends anyway. She’s not someone I would have confided in.”
“Did you think about calling the police?”
“And tell them what? I went on a date, we came back to my dorm room, and if you asked Gabriel, we ‘had sex,’” she said, making air quotes. “What were the police going to do, other than make me feel worse about myself?”
“So what did you do?”
“I called home. I wanted to talk to my mom.”
“How did that go?”
“Unfortunately, my father answered the phone.”
“Did you tell him what happened?”
“I wish I hadn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t want to talk to him about this. I wanted my mother. But he could hear the hysteria in my voice, and he wouldn’t hand over the phone until I told him what was the matter. What was ‘wrong with me,’ to use his words.”
“So you told him?”
“I tried. I got to the part where I invited Gabriel up to my room, and that was all my father needed to hear. He absolutely blasted me. ‘What? You invited a man to sit on your bed when your roommate was out of town! What did you think was going to happen?’”
That reaction didn’t surprise Jack, and not just because he’d met Isa’s father. The same questions were often asked of women with black eyes and broken ribs.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” said Jack. “I’m also sorry to tell you that your father’s views have not changed.”
“I’m not surprised. My father will never admit he’s wrong. He never apologizes.”
“Did you get to tell your mother about the attack?”
“Yes. Not that night, but later.”
“Did she believe you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Did she have no influence on your father’s views?”
“Not in this case. It’s a very screwed-up situation. My father blamed me and my mother for what happened.”
“I don’t understand.”
She paused, as if trying to figure out where to begin. “Growing up in the Bornelli house, I didn’t hear my parents argue over very many things.”
“They had a happy marriage?”
“Not really. My mother just always gave in to whatever my father said. Except when it came to pageants.”
“Beauty pageants?”
She nodded. “I was six years old when my mother put me in my first contest. I won, which was the worst thing that could have happened. From that point on, my mother was like millions of other mothers you could find in Venezuela. She had a picture of Hugo Chavez hanging in the kitchen, yet she would spend half the family budget sending her daughter to a beauty academy, and she’d drive hundreds of miles to the next pageant. It was like, ‘Yes, I’m a revolutionary . . . but please, please let my daughter grow up to be Miss Venezuela.’”
“How did you feel about that?”
“I hated it. But not nearly as much as my father did. I can remember being nine or ten years old. It was a five-hour drive to the pageant, so we got up at four a.m. My mother had me practice my walk in high heels in the kitchen before we left. Yes, ten-year-old girls walked in heels. Anyway, I guess all that click-click-click on the floor woke my father up. He came out of the bedroom, took one look at me, and screamed at my mother. ‘You’re turning her into a whore! She looks like a prostitute!’ And it wasn’t just the shoes. It’s the way you’re taught to carry yourself, to express yourself. It’s a game of seduction. We are hypersexualized at a very young age. My father was totally against it.”
“That must have ended when your father took the post at the consulate.”
“No way. I was eleven when we moved to Miami. That’s the age when things kick into high gear. The Venezuelan community is huge here. My mother found an academy on South Beach, next to one of the modeling agencies. Beautiful girls from Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, all getting a good education in the States while keeping up their beauty training.”
“How long did that last?”
“’Til I was fourteen. Ocean magazine did a story about South American beauty academies in south Florida. I was one of the featured girls. It was a huge embarrassment for my father. I think Chavez was even going to call him home.”
“So he put his foot down?”
“No. His fist. He punched my mother in the face so hard that he knocked her out cold.”
Jack felt as though he, too, had just been punched. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. It was pretty monstrous.”
Jack chose his next question carefully. “Did your mother report it to the police?”
“Of course not,” said Isa, and then Jack could almost see the wheels turning in her head. “Are you implying that’s the reason I didn’t call the police?”
Her response served to remind Jack that he was practicing pop psychology on a student of psychology. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I think we’ve about covered this,” said Isa, and her gaze intensified. “What I really want to talk about is how to get me out of here.”
“You heard what the judge said. We have a hearing in two weeks.”
“That’s too late.”
“I have my assistant working on it. I can’t promise anything, but Bonnie has been with me for almost twenty years, and if there is any way to cajole a judge’s secretary into giving us an earlier date on the judge’s calendar, Bonnie will find it.”
“I really cannot stay in this place,” she said.
“Keep in mind that we have work to do before you go back in front of the judge. It will be our job to show you’re not a flight risk. One thing we need to explain is why you bought a plane ticket to fly home with your family in two weeks, and why you also have a ticket to fly home without Melany the day after her surgery. I’m sure you can see how that looks like a contingency escape plan.”
“Of course that’s what it looks like. That’s what it was.”
Jack did a double take. “You booked the early flight as an escape plan?”
“Yes.”
“An escape from what?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, scoffing. “What’s the right answer? My demons? The threats from Cuban-American exiles that shut down the Venezuelan consulate? My father?”
“This isn’t the time to be flip.”
“I’m sorry, but I’ve had it with this. I came to Miami to be with my daughter on the day of her surgery. Instead, where am I? Locked in this room, dressed in this lovely prison jumpsuit, trying to tell my lawyer how to explain an airplane ticket at a stupid hearing that’s two weeks away. I need to be with my daughter on Friday, and I need my lawyer to get me out of here in time for me to be there.”
“I hear your frustration. But bail in a first-degree murder case is the exception, not the rule.”
“Are you saying it’s impossible?”
“No. But it’s not going to happen before Friday. Can you postpone the surgery for a couple of weeks?”
“In theory, yes. But every day we put this off, the chances of a full recovery for Melany diminish. So as much as I want to be there, that’s not an option. Keith will have to take her.”
“I think that’s the right decision.”
“Yeah. But it still sucks.”
“Unfortunately, that’s not the only hard choice you have to make. In fact, this one might even be harder.”
“What?”
“Are you going to tell me why you booked a contingency plan to fly back to Hong Kong the day after the surgery? What did you think you might have to escape from? What were you afraid of?” Jack leaned forward to put a finer point on his question. “Before you got on that plane in Hong Kong with your family, what did you know, Isa, about the investigation into the murde
r of Gabriel Sosa?”
Their eyes locked, but there was only silence.
Jack packed up and rose.
“Where are you going?” asked Isa.
“I’m going to let you sleep on it. Think very carefully. And understand that when we talk again tomorrow, it will be very bad for our relationship if you try to bullshit me.”
She didn’t answer.
Jack knocked on the door. It opened, and the correctional officers entered.
“I’m sorry you can’t be there for Melany,” said Jack. “I truly am.”
Jack left the conference room, his footfalls echoing in the corridor as he headed for the visitors’ exit.
Chapter 11
It wasn’t even five a.m. when Keith left their hotel room at the Four Seasons, took the elevator down to the motor port, and waited. A stretch limousine pulled up and four young women climbed out, stepping carefully onto the stone pavers in their five-inch heels and tight skirts. They were laughing about something, a silly laugh that said they were still feeling the effects of a night on South Beach and too many Red Bulls and vodka.
“Cool earbud,” said the blonde as she passed Melany. One of the other ladies shushed her and said, “That’s not an earbud,” but it only triggered another round of giggles all the way into the lobby.
The limo pulled away, and Jack’s wife drove up.
“There she is!” said Melany, meaning Riley.
The news that Mommy wouldn’t be at her surgery had left Melany almost inconsolable. It had been Andie’s idea for Riley to go with her to the hospital, which helped stop the tears. Keith hoped it would last at least through the pre-op.
Keith strapped Melany into the extra car seat in back and got in the passenger seat up front. Brickell Avenue ran through the heart of Miami’s financial district, but the predawn traffic was light, making the hospital just a ten-minute ride from their hotel.
“Did you find an apartment?” asked Andie.
Jack had warned Keith that this ordeal wouldn’t likely end soon. Keith addressed it with his supervisor and an executive decision was made to let Keith work from the Miami office of IBS for the next four weeks. They would then reevaluate.
“We move in this afternoon. Fully furnished. Don’t even have to change buildings. Just pack our bags and get in the elevator.” The Four Seasons was mixed use, both hotel and condo. “We’ll be on the sixty-first floor, which Melany thinks is pretty cool.”
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