Most Dangerous Place

by James Grippando

  What the heck do they want?

  The more muscular officer approached. “Keith Ingraham?”

  Keith stopped. “Yeah. Is something wrong?”

  “You’re under arrest.”

  The other officer cuffed Keith’s hands behind his back.

  “You gotta be kiddin’ me,” said Keith.

  Jack and Andie were dining at Hillstone’s Restaurant on Miracle Mile when his cell vibrated. keith flashed as an incoming call. It was an implicit nuptial vow that he didn’t take calls from clients while on a date with Andie on a Saturday night, but technically Keith wasn’t a client.

  “Welcome back,” Jack said.

  “I’ve been arrested.”

  Jack almost dropped the phone onto his seared bluefin tuna. Keith was at the Miami-Dade police station and gave Jack as much information as he could.

  “I’m on my way,” said Jack, and then he quickly told him all the things not to say or do before his lawyer arrived. They hung up, and Jack gave Andie the bad news.

  “Should I come with you?” she asked.

  “I think someone needs to be with Isa.”

  Andie agreed. She would get their meals boxed up and cab it to the Four Seasons. Jack kissed her good-bye, but she grabbed his hand before he could dash away from the table.

  “What is Keith charged with?” asked Andie.

  “A second-degree felony,” said Jack. “Accessory after the fact to murder.”

  Chapter 43

  Jack called Sylvia Hunt on his drive to the police station. On another Saturday night he wouldn’t have expected her to answer, but Keith’s arrest couldn’t have happened without her involvement.

  “Hello, Jack. I was just about to call and make sure you were aware of the latest developments.”

  Two fire trucks and an ambulance passed on U.S. 1 with sirens blaring. Jack adjusted the volume on his Bluetooth connection and returned his hands to the wheel. “This is unacceptable,” he said. “There was no need for you to arrest Keith this way. You could have called me with a heads-up, and he would have surrendered himself.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but I assure you that this wasn’t a stunt. Mr. Ingraham travels abroad more frequently than most commercial pilots. Our concern was that if we gave any advance notice, he wouldn’t return to Florida.”

  “Seriously? You think he would flee from his wife and daughter?”

  “This is a pointless debate, Jack. Let’s move forward. I’m a reasonable person. The good news for you is that bail is not an issue. We’ll agree to the release of Mr. Ingraham on his own recognizance. Just surrender his passport.”

  “He needs to travel to make a living.”

  “I can’t agree to let him leave Miami-Dade County. My suggestion is that you surrender his passport tonight, so he doesn’t spend the night in jail, and you can go before the judge on Monday to try and get it back.”

  Jack didn’t see much choice. “Fine. We’ll do that.”

  “And I will send you a copy of the indictment.”

  “Can you e-mail it now, please?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “It’s on its way.”

  Still driving, Jack hung up and immediately dialed Manny. Manny was perfectly happy to let Jack handle the Saturday-night duty without him. It was a blurry situation anyway. Jack would help his friend get out of jail tonight, but going forward, it wasn’t clear if Keith would need counsel separate from his wife’s defense team. It was an issue Jack flagged in his next call—to Isa—when he told her that he’d reached the police station and was waiting for MDPD to bring Keith to him. He was still thinking about it when the door opened and Keith entered the room.

  “Can you fucking believe this?” asked Keith as he seated himself in the chair at the table.

  Jack signaled him to stop talking until the MDPD officers left. When the door closed and they were alone, Jack answered the pending question. “Actually, I can.”

  Jack told him the good news about bail, but he could make no promises that the judge would allow him to leave the country.

  “If they keep my passport, you realize I will be looking for a new job,” said Keith.

  “Sylivia Hunt is well aware of that. Frankly, that’s why she indicted you, in my opinion.”

  “To ruin me? What is she, a psychopath?”

  “It’s a strategic move. Isa is of course the primary target here. Indicting a family member is a tried-and-true method of extracting a guilty plea from the principal defendant. I’ve seen it a hundred times before. The usual scenario is to go after the mother who hid her son—the ‘good boy’—while he was on the lam.”

  “You’re saying that the prosecutor indicted me so that Isa will plead guilty?”

  “She didn’t tell me that. It’s just my first instinct. We’ll probably see some kind of plea offer in the next few days.”

  “But wait a second. The prosecutor can’t just make up charges against me.”

  “She went back to the grand jury to get your indictment, so that gives her some protection from any claim that she made this up.”

  “How am I an accessory after the fact to the murder of Gabriel Sosa? I didn’t know Isa when that happened. I wasn’t even living in Miami.”

  “Accessory after the fact doesn’t mean you were driving the getaway vehicle. The government has to prove three things. One, Isa is guilty as charged. Two, you knew she was guilty. Three, you committed some act to conceal her involvement or to make it harder for police to apprehend her.”

  “They can’t prove any of those things,” said Keith.

  “You’re going to have to search your memory—go way back in your relationship.”

  “Let’s stop talking in the abstract. First, she’s not guilty. But what does the prosecutor say I did to protect her? Move to Hong Kong? That’s bullshit.”

  “No. A husband can’t be charged as an accessory to a crime committed by his wife—or vice versa. That’s the law in Florida. So it has to be something you did before you married Isa.”

  “There’s nothing.”

  “Actually, the indictment says there is.”

  “What?”

  Jack narrowed his eyes, making it clear that he wanted the truth. “The indictment alleges that you paid David Kaval twenty thousand dollars to keep quiet about Isa’s involvement.”

  Keith froze for a moment, then sat back in his chair, thinking. “Before we were married,” he said in a hollow voice.

  “Yes. Right before. You want to tell me about that?”

  “It’s not what it seems,” said Keith.

  “I’m all ears,” said Jack.

  Keith’s head rolled back as he breathed out heavily toward the ceiling. Then he looked at Jack.

  And he told him.

  Chapter 44

  Jack drove Keith to the Four Seasons and went up with him to the apartment. Melany was asleep. Keith was jet-lagged. Isa was wide awake. She hugged him the way a wife might hug a husband back from the battlefield. “I’m so, so sorry, honey. This is all my fault.”

  Jack let them have a few minutes alone, which turned into a few minutes more as Keith headed down the hall to check on Melany, Isa’s “Please don’t wake her” notwithstanding. Andie was in the living room, but she needed to leave and let Riley’s babysitter go home. Jack walked her down to the motor court, and she got a taxi to Key Biscayne. By the time Jack returned to the apartment, Manny was sitting on the L-shaped leather couch in the living room with Isa and Keith. Isa had called him an hour earlier.

  “I wanted him to be part of this,” said Isa.

  “Good. We’re all here,” said Jack.

  “Not to be a party pooper,” said Keith, “but I’m on Zurich time. It’s going on four a.m. to me.”

  “I’ll make coffee,” said Isa.

  “No more caffeine,” said Keith. “I say we all get a good night’s sleep and reconvene in the morning.”

  “How do you expect me to sleep?” asked Isa. “I don’t even know w
hat’s going on.”

  “Frankly, neither do I,” said Jack. “Keith and I talked at the station. I now have three different versions of the letters that David Kaval mailed from FSP to Zurich before you two were married. One story from him, one from Isa, and now one from Keith.”

  “Letters?” asked Isa. “There was only one letter.”

  Keith blinked. “No, Isa. There were two.”

  “No, I’m sure of it. Jack, I told you there was only one letter. I got one letter from him. That’s the truth.”

  “Yeah,” said Keith. “That is the truth. Because I was the one who checked the postbox on the day the second letter came. You never saw it.”

  “Keith, what are you saying?” she asked with trepidation.

  “There was a bank account number in the second letter. I wired twenty thousand dollars to get Kaval to leave us alone.”

  Jack had already heard Keith’s story, but Manny and Isa’s reaction was no different from what his had been—stunned silence.

  “I don’t understand,” said Isa.

  Jack said, “Keith has been indicted for allegedly paying twenty thousand dollars in hush money to David Kaval. In essence, the charge is that Keith bribed a witness to keep him from implicating you in the murder of Gabriel Sosa.”

  “Did the second letter say anything about Sosa?” asked Manny.

  “No,” Keith said firmly. “It’s like I explained to Jack already. This was about two months before our wedding. Isa told me that a crazy old boyfriend forged a marriage certificate and was going to make trouble for her. She said that she’d gone to see a lawyer, and he told her to ignore it. That seemed like bad advice to me. Then this second letter came. We don’t get a lot of mail from maximum-security facilities, so I knew it was from the same guy. I opened it and read it. At this point I totally disagreed with the advice Isa got from her lawyer to just ignore this.”

  “Did you talk to Isa about it?” asked Manny.

  “No” and “no,” they answered, Keith and Isa speaking almost in unison.

  “Isa was planning a wedding,” said Keith. “I did agree with her lawyer in one respect: don’t let this ruin your happy occasion. I decided to take care of it myself. I got my own lawyer to draft a dissolution of marriage and sent it to Kaval for his signature. I paid him twenty thousand dollars to sign it. I signed for Isa, and got it filed with the court. Problem solved.”

  “You wired twenty grand to David Kaval and never said a word to Isa?” asked Jack, incredulous. “Come on, Keith. Cut the shit.”

  “It’s true,” said Isa. “He never told me.”

  “All right,” said Keith. “It wasn’t just a matter of Isa planning a wedding. It wasn’t easy for Isa to tell me—her fiancé—about that first letter from Kaval. Let me be clear about this: there was never any mention of Gabriel Sosa. I never heard the guy’s name until Isa was arrested at the airport. But long before that, going back to the night Isa told me about the letter, Isa seemed terrified of this guy Kaval.”

  “I was,” she said quietly.

  Keith reached over and took her hand. “I didn’t want her to know that I was having any dealings with him. I just wanted to solve the problem and keep her out of it. I did what a lot of husbands, or husbands-to-be, would do. I took care of it for her.”

  Jack considered the enhancement—Keith’s new and improved version of the letter and the twenty thousand dollars. Jack’s cocounsel spoke up before he did.

  “Wow, that was awesome,” said Manny.

  “What do you mean?” asked Keith.

  “Either all of that is absolutely true, or you two missed your calling. This is Academy Award material—Best Actress and Best Actor, right here in your living room.”

  “That’s not funny,” said Keith.

  “There’s something else that’s not funny,” said Jack. “You say the money you sent to Kaval had nothing to do with Gabriel Sosa or the charges against Isa.”

  “It didn’t. Even Kaval kept quiet about it when you deposed him.”

  “Probably because he didn’t want to be charged with extortion on top of everything else,” Manny interjected.

  “Let’s keep the focus on you, Keith,” said Jack. “Almost from the beginning of this case you knew that Kaval was the chief witness against Isa. But you didn’t say anything about your own dealings with him. Not to me. Apparently not even to Isa. That’s inexcusable.”

  “How is that inexcusable? Shit, Jack, we’re friends, but you’re kind of an odd duck when it comes to criminal-defense lawyers. I thought you guys never wanted to know anything unless you asked for it.”

  Manny piped up. “That’s a whole nother debate.”

  “A debate we’re not going to have tonight,” said Jack.

  “Damn right we’re not,” Keith said, and then he rubbed his eyes with the base of his palms, as if trying to bring himself back to life. “You made your point, Jack. I should have told you. I’m sorry. I fucked up and kept this to myself, okay? But this wasn’t about Gabriel Sosa, and if I hear his name one more time tonight my head is going to explode. Since Thursday night I’ve flown from Hong Kong to Zurich, had my ass chewed out by one Swiss banker after another, got on another plane today and flew to Miami, and then ended up in a police station under arrest. I honestly can’t say that any other day since Isa’s arrest has been any less chaotic or any more fun than the last forty-eight hours. Can we pick this up again tomorrow? I need to go to bed.”

  Keith rose, but Jack didn’t.

  “I’m serious,” said Keith. “I need to sleep.”

  Jack rose, and the others followed suit. “Sure thing.”

  Isa and Keith walked the lawyers to the door. Keith shook their hands. Isa gave Jack a hug. It was the first time she’d done so.

  She seemed to intuit where Jack’s thoughts were leading him.

  They said good night, and the lawyers went to the elevator. Jack hit the call button, and the elevator was already there. They were alone on the ride down.

  “I may be out,” said Jack.

  “Out of what?”

  “The case,” said Jack. “Keith and I are old friends, which makes this hard enough. The fact that he’s been less than straight with me about David Kaval may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

  “Oh, please. Like you’ve never represented a client who held back from you.”

  “It’s different when friendship’s involved.”

  The elevator doors opened. Jack and Manny stepped into the lobby.

  “Fine,” said Manny. “You can represent Isa. I’ll represent Keith.”

  “Are you serious?” asked Jack.

  “Why not?” said Manny as they walked out to the motor court. “No question, Isa’s the marquee defendant in this case. But this could be fun, you and me. I got no problem with that.”

  “That could work, if the clients agree. Very gracious of you, Manny. Surprisingly gracious.”

  Jack would have to wait for his car, but Manny’s Aston Martin was parked up front with the Bentley Continental GT, the red Ferrari 458, the yellow Lamborghini Gallardo, and a half dozen other vehicles priced north of a quarter mil. The valet attendant opened the door and handed Manny the keys, but Manny stopped and looked back at Jack before getting in.

  “Funny thing, Jack. People say I’m all about serving my own ego. But that’s not true at all.” He flashed a little power grin and climbed behind the wheel. “I’m basically about the money.”

  The attendant closed the door for him. The engine roared, and Manny pulled away as if in pursuit of the checkered flag.

  Jack was still standing at the curb.

  “Is Mr. Espinosa a friend of yours?” asked the attendant.

  Jack handed him his valet ticket. “You know, I’m not really sure.”

  Chapter 45

  Isa wanted to keep talking. She followed Keith into the master bathroom and checked the dry patches beneath her eyes in the vanity mirror. Keith was brushing his teeth at the “his” basi
n.

  “I met with my father.”

  Keith stopped brushing. “When?”

  “Thursday night. Jack and Manny agreed that I should. I was going to tell you, but you’ve been harder to reach than usual the last couple of days.”

  He rinsed his toothbrush and put it in the rack. “What came out of it?”

  She told him about the envelope—and how her father had told her that it was about Gabriel Sosa. “He said that if I read what was inside, I would see things his way.”

  “What was in it?”

  “I don’t know. I still haven’t opened it.”

  “Doesn’t Jack think you should?”

  “I haven’t told him about it.”

  “Why not?”

  She turned away from the bathroom mirror, her eyes meeting his. “I wanted us to talk about it first.”

  “You want us to read it together?”

  She took a step closer and touched his hand. “Yes. Together.”

  Keith nodded. She opened the envelope and removed a handwritten letter. It was in Spanish. Keith watched as Isa read it to herself. Then she looked at him.

  “Do you want me to translate?” she asked, swallowing hard.

  She was giving her husband one last chance not to know all, and Keith seemed to appreciate the gravity of the situation.

  “Yeah,” he said finally. “Translate.”

  And she did.