When Darkness Falls

by James Grippando

  She was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, right beside Theo. He guessed she was nineteen, maybe twenty, but she was wearing way too much makeup, so it was difficult to tell. She was definitely Latin, with pretty features and a classic, heart-shaped face. Her getup, however, was strictly about sex appeal. Big gold-hoop earrings played against her olive skin and her long, chestnut hair. Her breasts were neither large nor small, but the contraption she was wearing beneath her low-cut blouse had pinched the B-cups together and nearly pushed them up to her chin. The deep red lipstick and heavy eye shadow were the perfect complement to her tight skirt, black heels, and fishnet stockings. Theo didn’t like to judge people, but he knew he wasn’t holed up with a nun.

  “I need to go,” she said. “I need to go now.”

  “Shut up!” said Falcon. “No one’s going anywhere!”

  “I meant to the bathroom.”

  Her response didn’t seem to register with Falcon. He had a vacant look in his eyes, as if part of him had just checked out. “You can’t drink now,” he said.

  “I don’t want a drink. I need to use the bathroom.”

  “It’s too soon.”

  “In thirty seconds, it will be too late.”

  “If you drink now, you’ll die.”

  She and Theo exchanged uneasy glances. Falcon was speaking to the young woman, but it was as if he were having another conversation.

  “What are you talking about?” she said in a tentative voice.

  Falcon started to pace-not the slow, peripatetic movements of a man in contemplation, but a relentless and angry back-and-forth, from one side of the room to the other. “Just shut up, shut up!” he said, slapping his left ear with one hand, clutching the gun with the other. It was the most agitated Theo had seen him since the standoff’s beginning. Neither he nor the young woman said a word.

  “Quit your damn whining,” said Falcon. “Ask the doctor. He’ll tell you. If you drink water now, you’ll die. Do you hear me? You’ll just die on me! Is that what you want to happen?”

  They weren’t sure if Falcon wanted a response, so they were silent.

  “Answer me! Is that what you want?”

  She shrank against the wall, as if wishing that she could just disappear. It was a scary situation to begin with, and his harsh tone was clearly pushing her to the edge. Theo said, “Leave her alone.”

  “What did you say?” Falcon said sharply.

  “I said leave her alone.”

  “Qué es su número?”

  “Say what?”

  “Qué es su número?”

  “I don’t speak Spanish, man.”

  The Latina whispered through her teeth to Theo, her lips barely moving. “He wants to know your number.”

  “What number? You mean my phone number?”

  “No, no!” shouted Falcon. “Su número!”

  “I got no idea what you’re talking about, dude.”

  His eyes filled with rage. He pointed his gun at the woman. “You want me to shoot the bitch? Do you?”

  “I don’t want you to shoot nobody.”

  “Then why do you make me do these things? Why?”

  “No one’s making you do nothin’,” said Theo. “Everybody’s cool.”

  “I don’t care if you’re thirsty. Do you want to die? Is that it?”

  “I said it’s cool, dude,” said Theo. “Ain’t nobody here who wants to die.”

  “Because giving her water right now would be just like squeezing this trigger and putting a bullet between her eyes. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  He might as well have been speaking Spanish again. Or Chinese. “Makes perfect sense to me. No problem. Whatever you say, we’re cool with it.”

  “Maybe you just wish you were dead. Is that it? Do you think you’d be better off dead?”

  Theo said, “Hey, here’s an idea. Just forget the water, the bathroom, and whatever else it is that’s got you pissed. Forget everything she said. Okay, boss?”

  Falcon kept pacing. A mixture of tension and confusion hung in the air. In the dimly lit room, and under these trying circumstances, it would have been difficult to read anyone’s expression. Not even Sigmund Freud, however, could have made heads or tails of this character and this outburst. Did Falcon hear what they were saying and simply misinterpret their words? Or did the sound of their voices trigger entirely distinct and distant voices inside his head? Theo wasn’t sure.

  Falcon stepped away from them, shaking his head in disgust. “You know what? Go ahead and drink the damn water. See if I care.” He began to pace again.

  Theo made eye contact with the young woman beside him, and they came to a silent understanding. This was a bad situation, and it was only deteriorating. It was too dangerous to sit around and wait for rescuers. They had to help themselves.

  They needed to enlist that man in the bathroom.

  Theo whispered, “What’s your name?”

  “Natalia.”

  “Okay, Natalia. Does your friend in the bathroom have a gun?”

  Falcon wheeled and started toward them. She waited until he crossed the room, made the turn again, and resumed pacing in the other direction, his back toward the hostages. Then she leaned closer to Theo and whispered in a voice that quaked, “I sure hope so.”

  THE DOOR TO the police command center opened. The footsteps were too heavy to be Alicia’s. Paulo turned at the approaching sound. Blind for over six months, and sometimes he still wheeled to face whatever it was that startled him, as if he could see it. He wondered when that instinct would leave him, if it would ever leave him completely. “Chavez?” said Paulo.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Got Daden on the line from Nassau. He needs to talk to you.” He put the cell phone in Paulo’s hand.

  Paulo felt a surge of adrenaline. He needed a fresh angle with Falcon, and he hoped that Daden and the Bahamian connection would supply it. “What do you have for me?” he said into the telephone.

  Daden’s voice was hurried, excited. “Fingerprint search on the handwritten note we found in the safe deposit box just came back. There was a match.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have a name.”

  “You just said there was a match.”

  “There was.”

  “Then who is it?”

  “Last week, when the lab pulled that extraneous print from Officer Mendoza’s compact, they entered it into the FBI’s data bank. Well, that’s our match.”

  “Wait a second,” said Paulo. “You’re saying that the person who stole Alicia’s purse from that bar in Coral Gables is the same person who took the money from Falcon’s safe deposit box in the Bahamas?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. That’s what the fingerprint tells us.”

  Paulo thought for a moment, wondering if there could have been some kind of mistake. He knew better. “Fingerprints don’t lie,” he said.

  “No, sir. They sure don’t.”

  chapter 26

  J ack kept his promise to Sergeant Paulo. He was back in Miami before sunrise-barely.

  Seaplanes were meant to land at five a.m. Government Cut, the man-made channel that connected the Port of Miami to the Atlantic, was like a sheet of glass-no chop, no wakes, no beer-chugging morons showing off their brand-new boats and their total ignorance of the rules of right of way. Jack had managed to catch an hour of sleep on the flight from Nassau, not long enough to refresh him but he took what he could get. The landing was so smooth-or perhaps Jack was just so out of it-that he would have kept right on sleeping had Zack not shouted the operative word.

  “Fire!”

  Jack shot out of his chair like-well, like a man running out of a burning airplane. He caught his bearings, and when he finally managed to focus, he saw Zack smiling back at him. “Was that supposed to be funny?”

  “Sorry, dude. I called your name fifteen times, and you just kept snoring.”

  Jack could have rattled off a dozen different ways
to wake someone from a deep sleep, none of which induced cardiac arrest, but he let it go. Zack was obviously one of those delightful adults who still thought of wedgies and short-sheeting the bed as a barrel of laughs.

  Man, do I miss Theo.

  A City of Miami squad car was waiting at the dock. Jack got in the backseat, and they rode straight up Biscayne Boulevard, stopped at the traffic-control checkpoint, and then continued north.

  A dawn of early-morning shadows crept across the evacuated city streets. The police presence had grown substantially since Jack’s departure, much larger than Jack had expected. Every conceivable side street had been shut down. In addition to the MDPD and the City of Miami police, Florida state troopers had come onto the scene. Snipers were posted on rooftops. Squad cars and SWAT vans filled the parking lot outside the fast-food restaurant that was now the site of a mobile command center. Police air coverage had replaced the media choppers. As night turned into morning, members of the media and a few curious onlookers were beginning to gather at the police barricades on Biscayne Boulevard.

  Seeing all this firepower in the morning hours, and seeing the crowd at the barricades, sent a strange image flashing through Jack’s mind. He was reminded of a certain autumn night in northeastern Florida, outside the Florida State Prison. A group of demonstrators-some supporting the death penalty, others against it-had gathered in an all-night vigil. They crowded as near to the prison gate as the state troopers would allow. A cold fog stirred in anticipation of the warm morning air, as if the sliver of sunshine on the horizon signaled much more than just the dawn of another day. Theo Knight was less than an hour away from his date with the electric chair. His head and ankles had already been shaved to ensure a clean contact for the electrodes that would pass twenty-five hundred volts through his body. Jack had said his goodbyes. It was the closest he would ever come to losing Theo-much closer than any lawyer should ever come to burying a client who was innocent. Back then, it was the state doing everything within its power to put Theo Knight to death. Jack’s own father, Governor Harry Swyteck, had even signed the death warrant. Now, years later, and just a few blocks away from the neighborhood in which a fifteen-year-old Theo had been arrested for murder, an army of police officers had been deployed to save Theo’s life. The executioner this time was not Jack’s father but one of Jack’s clients. The guilty executing the innocent. The ironies were piling up too quickly for Jack to absorb. It was like his abuela used to say in yet another one of those Cuban expressions that her culturally challenged grandson could never seem to remember, but it boiled down to this: Life was full of sharp turns in the road.

  Jack wondered if his client-his friend-would beat the odds again.

  The squad car drove right past the mobile command center. Jack leaned forward and tapped on the steel grate that separated the front from the backseat. “We just passed it.”

  “We’re not going there yet,” the cop said.

  “Where are we headed?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Jack said, “Paulo said he wanted me there ASAP. Where are you taking me?”

  “The mayor needs to speak to you.”

  “What about?”

  The cop didn’t answer. They turned at the corner and pulled into a parking garage. The squad car stopped. The driver got out and opened Jack’s door. Jack climbed out of the backseat. The cop nodded toward a dark blue sedan parked at the end of the row. The click of Jack’s heels echoed off concrete walls as he approached the vehicle. Jack was two steps away when he heard the power locks release. The passenger door opened a little and then swung out all the way, as if pushed from the inside. Jack climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door.

  Mayor Raul Mendoza was seated behind the wheel. “Hello, Jack.”

  “Mr. Mayor,” he said flatly.

  The mayor laid an unlit cigar on the dashboard. The tip had been chewed flat, as the mayor had been sucking tobacco to work off stress. “We didn’t do so well in our phone conversation last week,” said the mayor. “I was hoping that the personal touch might make a difference.”

  “That depends on what you want to talk about.”

  He paused, seeming to measure his words. “Look, you and I are on the same side here. I think we can agree on a few simple facts. One, this Falcon character is a nutcase who is fully capable of cold-blooded murder. Two, he has your friend. And three, he wants my daughter.”

  “Has he asked to speak to her?”

  “Not yet. But he will. And when he does, I want your word that you will not let it happen.”

  “How is that my department?”

  “I’m not saying that the City of Miami Police Department is a sieve, but I am the mayor. I’m told that Falcon wants to talk to you. And if he plays ball and gives up something in return, they’ll agree to put you on the phone.”

  “They want me to negotiate with him?”

  “‘Negotiate’ might not be the right word. I’m sure that your dialogue will be scripted, or at least highly coached. But yes, they are going to let you talk to him.”

  “I’m okay with that, I guess.”

  The mayor flashed a sardonic smile. He took the cigar from the dashboard and tucked it into the corner of his mouth. “That’s very nice,” he said, the cigar wagging as he spoke. “But this isn’t a pep talk, pal. It’s about ground rules. My rules.”

  “Your rules?”

  “Yeah.” He removed the cigar and said, “When you get on that phone, I’m sure that Falcon is going to demand to speak with Alicia. I don’t care how much you want to appease this guy, or what Paulo tells you to say. I don’t care if Falcon puts a gun to your friend’s head or if he threatens to blow up the entire building. Do not hand that phone to my daughter. Period.”

  “Well, wait just a second. As I told you when we had our little telephone conversation about Falcon’s bail, I’m sympathetic to a father’s concerns for his daughter. But I intend to do what the negotiators tell me to do.”

  “Do you want to get your friend killed?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then listen to me. Vince Paulo has this enormous set of balls that makes him believe that a face-to-face talk with a hostage-taker is a good idea. That’s what happened last time, when everything literally blew up in his face. Now he’s blind, and this time he’ll need someone to take him by the arm and walk him into another death-trap. I’m not going to let that person be Alicia.”

  “Just because we put her on the telephone doesn’t mean that she’s headed for an up-close and personal talk with the gunman.”

  “It’s the first step. Clearly, Falcon is obsessed with my daughter. For crying out loud, he stole her lipstick and sent her that sick ‘It’s only out of love that I seek you’ e-mail.”

  “You need to check your department sources, mayor. They’re not so sure it was Falcon who did either of those things.”

  “Are you denying that this guy has a thing for my daughter?”

  Jack remembered his first meeting with Falcon, the look in Falcon’s eye when they spoke about Alicia. “No. I don’t deny it. But she’s a cop, and if letting her talk to Falcon can get a hostage released, I’m all for it. I think we should trust the negotiators on this.”

  “I trust nobody, all right? Do you-” He started to say something, then stopped. At first, Jack thought he was trying to control his anger, but it seemed that some other emotion was at work. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to lose-”

  Jack waited for him to finish, but again the mayor stopped himself. The mayor was looking straight ahead, toward his own reflection in the windshield, making no eye contact with Jack as he continued in a solemn voice. “I don’t talk about this very often, but Alicia’s mother is my second wife. I was married once before. Had another daughter.” He paused, then added, “She was eight years old when she died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “September sixteenth, nineteen seventy-four. Isabel and her mother were in a pastry shop in Buenos Aires.
They had been out shopping, had their bags and packages with them. They decided to stop for something sweet before coming home. They were just sitting there at the counter, having a perfect little mother-daughter day.”

  Jack was watching him, but the mayor was still looking through the windshield, staring out at nothing.

  “And out of the blue,” the mayor said, his voice starting to quake. He swallowed hard to regain his composure. “Out of the blue, there was this huge explosion. A bomb. Some crazy terrorist son of a bitch had decided to blow up a bank branch right next to innocent shoppers. Can you imagine anyone doing such a thing?”

  Jack could, but he wished he couldn’t.

  “About forty bombs were exploded around the country just on that day alone. My wife was dead at the scene. Our daughter died in the hospital, two days later.”

  “I had no idea. I truly am sorry.”

  The two men sat in silence. Jack wasn’t sure what to say. Would it really have mattered if he had promised to do everything in his power to keep Alicia out of the hostage negotiations? Or was the mayor simply trying to close old wounds-trying to convince himself that, this time around, he was doing everything he possibly could to protect his daughter, even if his demands on Jack were not entirely reasonable, even if his fears for Alicia were not completely rational? Finally, the mayor leaned over the console, reached across Jack’s torso, and grabbed the passenger-door handle. The invasion of personal space made Jack uneasy.

  “Keep my daughter out of this,” the mayor said as he pushed the door open for Jack. “Or we may both regret it.”

  It had almost sounded like a threat, but the situation was too delicate, too ambiguous, for Jack to challenge him on it. Jack offered a little nod, wanting to give the man something, if only out of pity for what had happened to the Mendoza family more than a quarter-century ago. Then he climbed out of the car and closed the door.

  The engine started, and the mayor drove away.