When Darkness Falls

by James Grippando

  “I said let me think!”

  “Okay, take your time.”

  In the ensuing silence, Paulo made a slow, palms-down gesture, as if telling Jack to be patient.

  “I got it,” said Falcon. “I’ll give you shit in return. How’s that sound?”

  Jack considered it, wondering how to handle such an offer within the parameters of Paulo’s never-say-no rule. “What kind of shit?” said Jack.

  “Horseshit. Bullshit. Whatever kind of shit you want. We got it all, and every time you bastards call me, the inventory just keeps piling up. Now, for the last time,” he said, his voice rising, “where’s my damn money?”

  Jack measured his words. He could hear the strain in Falcon’s voice. “I’m not going to lie to you, all right? But we need to have an understanding here. If I tell you the truth, you have to be able to deal with it. Can you do that?”

  “Just tell me where my money is.”

  Paulo made another hand gesture, this time a sharp, cutting signal, which Jack read as “Stay away from the truth.” Jack said, “Let me check on your money, okay? I’ll work on it, I promise. But you have to give me something.”

  “You don’t deserve anything.”

  “Do you want your necklace or not?”

  “Don’t hang that over my head.”

  “I talked to your friend, the Bushman. I know how badly you need it.”

  There was silence, and Jack’s instincts were telling him that he’d played exactly the right card. Paulo, however, was making that slashing signal again, silently but emphatically telling Jack not to go down the road of the Disappeared.

  “Here’s the deal,” said Falcon. “I’ll give everyone here a turn on the telephone. Ten seconds, no more. They can tell you who they are, and they can give you the name of a friend or relative to call. You cool with that?”

  “What do you mean by ‘everyone’? Exactly how many people do you have in there?”

  “Do you want my deal or not?”

  Jack glanced at Paulo, who gave a quick nod of approval. “Okay. Agreed.”

  “But first I get my necklace,” said Falcon. “Send it in with the food.”

  Paulo shook his head firmly. Jack spoke into the phone, “First you let the hostages make their phone calls. Sorry, Falcon, but that’s just the way it has to be.”

  Jack heard him muttering under his breath, and, in his mind’s eye, he saw Falcon swinging his fist at no one, on the verge of an explosion. Falcon said, “Am I going to have to shoot one of these people?”

  “Don’t do that,” said Jack.

  “Is that the only way I can get your attention?” Falcon said, his voice suddenly racing.

  “Please, don’t even think about it.”

  “Because I can play the game that way, if you want me to.”

  “That’s not what anyone wants.”

  “I can hurt people.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  “If I put my mind to it, I can really hurt people.”

  Jack heard a sudden scream in the background-a man, though it didn’t really sound like Theo. “Falcon, if you do that one more time, you’ll have SWAT all over you. Just get it under control.”

  There was a brief silence, and then Falcon spoke in a halting voice. “It’s under control, Jack. It’s totally under control.”

  “Did you hurt someone?”

  “No. You did. Now bring me my damn necklace.”

  The line disconnected.

  “It’s all right,” said Paulo. “That was Falcon screaming, not your friend Theo.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m blind, not deaf,” he said. “Trust me. You got us off to a good start.”

  Jack wanted to believe him, but his hand was shaking as he handed Paulo the telephone. “What’s he going to do when I tell him that his money’s gone?”

  “Hopefully, this standoff will be over before we get to that point.”

  “What if it’s not?”

  Paulo was looking straight at him, and it was obvious that he could hear the concern in Jack’s voice. “Like I say,” said Paulo. “Hopefully, it will be over before then.”

  chapter 33

  T heo listened carefully to Falcon’s every word. The phone call seemed real this time, and it struck Theo as a positive step that Falcon was speaking directly to Jack and not the police. Theo didn’t want anyone putting his own interest higher than that of the other hostages, but at least he felt confident that Jack wouldn’t hold his any lower.

  “Impressive,” said Falcon as he tucked away the cell phone. “Your buddy made his five-minute deadline with twenty seconds to spare.”

  “I wasn’t worried. Jack is psychic, you know.”

  Theo gave no outward indication that he was joking, which clearly made Falcon uncomfortable. “You messing with me?” said Falcon.

  “That’s for you to figure out,” said Theo.

  His eye twitched nervously, and then Falcon turned away. Theo noticed that his face was taking on a constant red and puffy quality, but it wasn’t anger. It was the winter coat. Miami’s cold snap was over, clearly, and the closed-in room was heating up in a hurry. Falcon had to be roasting. Still, he wouldn’t remove that bulky coat.

  “Listen up,” said Falcon. “I’m gonna let you make some phone calls. Keep it short. Just give your name and the phone number of a friend or relative who the cops can call and say you’re doing just fine. That’s it. Anybody breaks the rules, I break your head. Got it?”

  No one answered.

  “Good. We’ll start with the girls.” He poked his head into the bathroom. “Natasha, how’s your friend?”

  “My name’s Natalia. And my friend is in no shape to speak on the telephone, if that’s what you’re asking. She’s still fading in and out.”

  “Then wake her up.”

  “I think we should let her rest.”

  “I think she could use a little cold water in that tub.”

  Theo said, “Are you crazy? You’ll send her into shock, for sure.”

  “The doctor says it’s okay.”

  “What doctor?”

  “We don’t do the water treatment unless the doctor says it’s okay.”

  “What doctor?” said Theo.

  Falcon didn’t answer. He went to the tub and turned on the cold water. It spit out a few drops before going dry. “Bastards! They cut off the water.”

  “Must be what the doctor ordered,” said Theo.

  “Okay, smart mouth. We’ll start with you, and then the pretty boy next to you. But first, I gotta take a dump. You can watch or look the other way. Don’t make no difference to me.”

  With the bathroom door open, Theo had a clear view of the toilet, so he looked the other way as Falcon lowered his pants. The coat stayed on.

  The man next to Theo leaned closer and whispered, “I can’t get on that phone.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because-Can’t you see what was going on here, man? These girls aren’t exactly what you’d call my friends.”

  “So that must make you their priest who came here trying to save the hos.”

  “Nice try. I’ve already worked that one through my mind, and it won’t fly. But I have to say something when the crazy man hands me the phone.”

  “Just tell them that your name is John and that you’re here on business.”

  “Make fun all you want. But how would you feel if the world was about to know that you were in a two-bit hotel room with a pair of eighteen-year-old prostitutes.”

  “Eighteen?” Theo said with a light chuckle. “You can only hope, buddy.”

  “Will you stop being such an ass, please? This could be the death of my career.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  The guy didn’t answer, but Theo did a double take. “Hey, now I know. Ain’t you the weather guy on Action News?”

  “Weather guy?” the man said, straining to show confusion. “You must be thinking of someone else.”


  “No, dude. I watch you every night at eleven. Walt the Weather Wizard.”

  “That’s not me.”

  “Like hell. Dress you up with some hair gel and one-a those snappy Armani jackets, and you’re definitely Walt the Weatherman. But I thought you was gay.”

  “No, I’m married.”

  “You mean, was married.”

  The weatherman closed his eyes and then opened them, as if in mortal pain. “Dear God, I’m screwed.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Theo. “You are so screwed.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening. All over a stupid shopping bag.”

  “What?” Theo had heard it all as a bartender, but this was one story that not even a psychologist/mixologist could have been expected to endure without being tied down-literally. It seemed that the weatherman’s teenage daughter needed to return a pair of jeans that she’d borrowed from a friend at school. Stupid husband put the jeans in a regular old grocery bag. Angry wife nearly had a stroke. “You can’t use a bag from Winn-Dixie!” she shrieked as she ran off to the closet. Moments later, she returned, the jeans wrapped in packing tissue and tucked neatly into a signature powder blue shopping bag from Tiffany.

  “She was ready to kill me over a shopping bag,” he told Theo, “all because she doesn’t want some rich girl’s mother to find out that we shop at Winn-Dixie. So I look at her and say, ‘When did the funny and sexy woman I married turn into such a pretentious bitch?’”

  “Ouch.”

  “Was I wrong?”

  “You’re always wrong,” said Theo. “It’s in the contract. Read the fine print.”

  “You think I should have apologized?”

  “Hmmm. Apologize or run out the door and hire yourself a couple of teenage hookers? Let’s call Dr. Phil about that one.”

  The weatherman breathed a hopeless sigh, as if hearing it from Theo made things even worse. “What should I do now?”

  “You do whatever it takes to get out of here alive.”

  “Then what?”

  “You do the honorable thing.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Shoot yourself.”

  “Shoot myself?”

  “Yes. But not on her duvet cover. She’ll hate you for that. You don’t mess with a woman’s duvet cover.”

  The guy nodded, as if it all made sense. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  The toilet flushed, and out with Falcon’s waste went the last liter of water left in the hotel room. “All right, smart guy,” Falcon said to Theo. “You’re first.”

  The weatherman whispered, “Please, I can’t get on that phone.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Theo, “he ain’t gonna get to you.”

  Falcon dialed the number, waited for an answer, and dispensed with all pleasantries. Theo couldn’t even tell if he was speaking to Jack or the cops. “Here’s your roll call,” said Falcon, speaking into the phone. He held the gun in his right hand, the phone in his left. “Ten seconds,” he told Theo. “Your name and a contact.”

  As soon as the phone was in place, Theo blurted out Falcon’s secret in rapid-fire fashion. “He’s wired with explosives under his coat and-”

  “Asshole!” Falcon yanked away the phone and kicked Theo in the belly with the force of an angry mule.

  Theo slid to the floor, unable to breathe. He hadn’t been one-hundred-percent certain about the explosives, but he’d felt something earlier when they wrestled on the floor, and Falcon’s refusal to remove his winter coat despite the rising heat only fueled Theo’s suspicions.

  Falcon kicked him again, and with all the cursing, Theo knew he was right. The guy was definitely wired.

  “I make this promise,” Falcon said, seething as he put the gun to Theo’s head. “No matter what happens, you are not walking out of here.”

  chapter 34

  E xplosives changed everything-especially for Vince Paulo.

  Since losing his sight, Vince had heard all the amazing stories. The guy who blew his nose so violently that his eye popped out. The firefighter whose eye was left hanging by the optic nerve after a blast from a fire hose. The child who ruptured her eye on a bedpost while bouncing on the mattress. Metalworkers with steel shards embedded near the optic disc or with splashes of molten lead on the eyeball. A soldier shot at arm’s length, the projectile entering the inner canthus of the right eye and lodging under the skin of the opposite side. What made these cases remarkable was that in each instance, the ultimate visual impairment was nonexistent or negligible, or so the tales of medical miracles went. On the other side of the spectrum were patients who seemed to suffer only minor ocular trauma, the globe still intact, but whose vision was lost forever. They were the unlucky ones, the Vince Paulos of the world.

  “Bomb squad is standing by, Sergeant.”

  Vince heard the message over his earpiece, but he didn’t answer right away. Theo Knight’s mere mention of explosives had Vince seeing that pockmarked door again, the opening at the end of the hallway to his personal and permanent tunnel of darkness.

  “Vince?” said Alicia. She was standing at his side.

  “Yeah, I heard. I was just thinking for a minute.” It was a lie, of course-at least the part about “a minute.” Vince had been thinking and rethinking for months, imagining how different things might have been if he just hadn’t pushed open that door. He keyed his mike and told the bomb-squad leader to stand down until he made one more attempt to reestablish contact with Falcon.

  Alicia said, “Just because this Theo says there’s a bomb doesn’t mean Falcon has one.”

  “We have to assume the worst.”

  “Do you really think he has the know-how to make one?”

  “He had two hundred thousand dollars in a Bahamian safe deposit box. He’s packing a nine-millimeter pistol with plenty of ammunition. He shot two officers in a gunfight in the dark, and now he’s more than holding his own in a hostage standoff against the entire City of Miami. I think it’s time we all erase from our minds the image of a hapless homeless guy atop a bridge and focus more on the sick bastard who for no apparent reason beat a defenseless woman to death with a lead pipe.”

  “I was just asking, Vince.”

  He could hear the change in Alicia’s tone, and he realized that his own intensity was getting the best of him. It was time to get control over those feelings that lingered just below the surface and never really went away, time to quell the useless anger over a risk he should never have taken. “Sorry,” he said. “Guess I should just catch my breath and chill a little, huh?”

  He felt the gentle touch of her hand on his forearm. She said, “This is a different ballgame than the one Chief Renfro and I invited you to. Are you okay with it?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I don’t know. Too much like the last one, maybe.”

  “No, you’re wrong. It’s nothing like the last one. This time I have a warning. I can see what’s coming.” The unintentional pun drew a mirthless chuckle from somewhere inside him, like a reflex.

  The phone rang, but it wasn’t on the dedicated line to the hotel room. It was Vince’s cell. The call was from Detective Barber, the lead homicide investigator. “Got an update for you on the body in Falcon’s car,” he said.

  “Good. Alicia Mendoza is right here with me. Let me put my cell on speaker.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t do that,” said Barber.

  Vince wasn’t sure how to interpret the detective’s concern, but he obliged. “Okay, no speaker.”

  Barber said, “In fact, I’d prefer that this information and everything you say in response to it be just between us. It might be important to your negotiations.”

  “All right.” He covered the phone and said, “Alicia, could you excuse me for a minute?”

  He sensed some confusion on her part-just a vibe that he picked up from her hesitation-but it was only for a moment.

  “No problem,” she said. “I’ll get some coffee.”

>   Vince waited for the door to open, then close. “I’m back,” he said into the phone.

  “I have an eyewitness who claims to have seen a well-dressed, twentysomething-year-old man, either light-skinned black or dark-skinned Hispanic, speaking to Falcon two nights ago by the river.”

  “What time?”

  “Just after dark. If I tie that in with the medical examiner’s report, it’s not long before our Jane Doe ended up dead and stuffed inside the trunk of Falcon’s car-Er, home.”

  “Any idea who it might be? Your physical description could fit half the young men in Miami.”

  “True. But fortunately our witness got a license plate number.”

  “How did it come back?”

  “This is where it gets interesting. It’s a guy named Felipe Broma. He works security for Mayor Mendoza.”

  Vince suddenly understood why the detective wanted Alicia out of earshot. “You talked to Broma yet?”

  “No.”

  “How about the mayor?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  There was silence on the line, then Barber said, “I’ve been a detective a long time. I listen to my instincts.”

  “What are your instincts telling you?”

  “There’s only one way to find out what’s really going on here. And talking to the mayor or his bodyguard is not the answer.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I need to talk to Falcon,” said Barber. “Through you.”

  Vince considered it. “Let me see if I can get him talking again. We’ll take it from there.”

  “One other thing,” said Barber. “Not a word of this to the mayor’s daughter. Agreed?”

  Vince wasn’t entirely sure what the detective had on his agenda, but he wasn’t hot on the idea of keeping secrets from Alicia-at least not without a more compelling explanation from Barber. “Like I say: I’ll see if I can get Falcon talking, and we’ll go from there.”

  chapter 35

  T hings were finally coming clearer to Falcon.

  Even without electricity, enough sunlight seeped into the room to show the faces of all his prisoners. The girl in the bathtub was not the woman he’d originally thought she was, not the past he feared. She was just a girl without a name, like many others he’d known years earlier.