Hear No Evil

by James Grippando

  She spoke in a low, quiet voice, still no eye contact. “You have to understand. After you read the investigative report, when you called me, you sounded so high on the idea that the time of death proved me innocent. I…I just didn’t want to shoot down the best thing I had going for me. Not right out of the gate.”

  “Did you think you could trick me into being your lawyer?”

  She was suddenly trembling. Jack instinctively snatched the box of tissues from his desktop and gave her one.

  “I’m innocent,” she said, her voice quaking. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be accused of killing the father of your child, and to be innocent?”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “Then don’t you see? At the time, it didn’t matter to me why you thought I was innocent. All that mattered was that you believed I didn’t do it.”

  “Misleading me hardly reinforces that belief.”

  “If I could prove my innocence to you, then I wouldn’t need you.”

  She dabbed away a tear, and Jack gave her a moment to compose herself. “Fair enough. But if you lie to me, you can’t have me.”

  “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Ever since this thing started, it’s felt like no one is on my side. The police, everyone. They all seem to have their minds made up.”

  “Why do you think that’s the case?”

  “I think it’s because of something I said to the Gazette.”

  “What’s the Gazette?”

  “It’s the local paper down at the base. They asked me what I think happened to my husband, so I told them. And they printed it. From that day on, you’d think I was wearing a big stamp across my forehead that reads ‘ENEMY COMBATANT.’ ”

  “What did you say?”

  She hesitated, as if she wasn’t quite sure if Jack was ready to hear her theory. “My husband wasn’t so much murdered as he was…eliminated.”

  “How do you mean, eliminated?”

  “Silenced.”

  “By whom?”

  She seemed unaware of it, but her hand had become a tight, angry fist around her tissue. “That NCIS investigative report has been completely sanitized. Doesn’t it make you wonder what they’re hiding?”

  “From what I understand, that kind of redaction is not unique to this case.”

  “I’m sure it happens all the time. Whenever the navy has something to hide.”

  She was starting to sound paranoid, but Jack measured his words. “After all you’ve been through, you’re certainly entitled to a certain amount of skepticism.”

  “You may not be aware of this, but the military’s track record on homicide investigations is less than stellar.”

  “That’s a pretty sweeping indictment.”

  “I’m not saying they’re incompetent. I’m saying that certain people in the military are not beyond a cover-up.”

  “And you know this because…”

  “I was married to a career officer for twelve years. And I’ve done my homework. Did you know that the NCIS once tried to convince a mother and father that their son had shot himself in the head even though it was a scientific fact that he couldn’t have produced the bullet trajectory unless he was standing on his head when he pulled the trigger?”

  “That’s appalling.”

  “It gets better. In another case, the NCIS issued a finding on July ninth that a Marine’s wounds were self-inflicted. You know when they got the results back on ballistics, gunshot residue, and blood and tissue tests? August sixth.”

  “Obviously, you’ve looked into this. But this isn’t a case of homicide covered up as suicide.”

  “The point is, they are capable of doing whatever suits their needs. They needed my husband out of the way, but no one would ever have believed that he had committed suicide. He loved life too much. So they did away with him, and instead of calling it suicide, they make it look like his wife did it. And then they issue this so-called investigative report that’s completely full of holes. All meaningful information is blacked out in the name of protecting military secrets and national security.”

  Jack gave her a long, hard look. “For the sake of argument, let’s assume a cover-up. You’re saying that the military decided not to paint his death as suicide because they didn’t think anyone would ever believe he killed himself.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But for some reason the military came to the conclusion that no one would have any trouble believing that you would kill your husband.”

  She didn’t answer right away, obviously uncomfortable with the way Jack had dissected things. “That’s the essence of any frame-up,” she said.

  “A frame-up is a huge leap. Especially when you’ve shown me no motive.”

  “If you knew my husband, you’d understand my suspicions. We spent almost a third of our marriage on that little fenced-in chunk of Cuba. Year after year, I begged him to put in for a transfer. People are nice enough there, and it has a sense of community. But I hated the isolation. Oscar, on the other hand, was Mr. Guantánamo all the way. He wanted to rise as high as he possibly could right there on the island, no desire to go anywhere. Then, suddenly, that’s all out the window. Two weeks before he was killed, completely out of the blue, he tells me he thinks it’s time to leave.”

  “Change of heart, maybe?”

  “No. It was a lot of little things-the way he lay awake at night, the fact that he was suddenly going to bed with a loaded gun in the nightstand. He probably didn’t think I noticed these things, but I did. He was worried about something. He was suddenly acting like a man on the run. Like a man who knew something he wasn’t supposed to know.”

  “Such as?”

  “The military is full of secrets. And plenty of people have died trying to keep them.”

  “I need more than that.”

  “Then help me find it, damn it.”

  She was clearly frustrated, and Jack could understand it. He rose, walked around to the front of his desk, and took a more casual seat on the corner of it, no barriers between them. “Look, you’re probably thinking that lawyers defend guilty clients all the time, so why is this guy so obsessed with guilt or innocence. But this case is-”

  “Different,” she said, finishing the thought for him. “I know.”

  “You understand why?”

  “Of course. You want what’s best for your,” she caught herself, then said, “for my son. Just as I do. Which is why I would never-even if I’d wanted Oscar dead-I would never have shot him in our house while our son was sleeping in the next room. Deaf or not. Does that make any sense at all to you, Mr. Swyteck?”

  Jack met her stare, and suddenly the silence between them was no longer uncomfortable. It was as if the proverbial light had finally come on. “Yes, it does, Lindsey. And I think it’s probably time you started calling me Jack.”

  6

  Alejandro Pintado was searching for good news. Literally.

  As usual, his search had taken him over the Straits of Florida, a band of water some ninety miles wide that connected the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, that separated Key West from Cuba, that divided freedom from tyranny. For more than four decades Cubans had fled Fidel Castro’s oppressive communist regime in makeshift rafts, leaky boats, or even patched-up inner tubes. They risked their lives on the high seas, many of them making it to the United States, many others succumbing to tropical storms and walls of water, blistering sun and dehydration, or sunken vessels and hungry sharks. It was a tragedy that Alejandro had seen unfold with his own eyes, starting with his first mission in 1992. He’d made two passes over a small boat. On the first, he counted nine bodies strewn this way and that, as if they had simply collapsed. His second time around a woman stirred at the bow, barely able to raise her arm. She never moved again. As best the Coast Guard could tell, a storm had washed their water and supplies overboard on the first night of their journey. In desperation they drank seawater. There were no survivors. It was no wonder that, to the exile comm
unity in Miami, the Straits of Florida were known as the Cuban Private Cemetery.

  Despite the danger, they kept coming. So long as they were out there, Alejandro Pintado was determined to keep looking.

  “ Key West, this is Brother One,” he said, speaking into his radio transmitter. “I have a visual.”

  “Copy that,” came the reply.

  Alejandro pushed forward on the yoke and dropped to an altitude of five hundred feet, his old single-engine Cessna whining as it picked up speed. The scene on the open waters below him was a familiar one, but it still made his heart race. Six-to eight-foot seas, foamy white caps breaking against a vast ocean as blue as midnight, a thing of beauty if it weren’t so dangerous. A small raft rising to the top of each swell, then disappearing between them, the white canvas sail tattered from winds much stronger than most rafters could anticipate. The craft was overloaded, of course, packed with three children, five women-one of them holding an infant-and six men. Some were standing, having spotted the plane, waving the oars frantically to get the pilot’s attention.

  You are almost home, thought Alejandro, smiling to himself.

  His aircraft continued to descend. Three hundred feet. Two hundred. The rafters were jumping up and down, shouting with joy, as Alejandro sped past them. He waved from the cockpit, then began to circle around.

  “ Key West, this is Brother One,” he said. “Looks like a happy group. Fairly good shape, considering.”

  Alejandro had definitely seen worse. He’d started in the early nineties as a pilot with Brothers to the Rescue, a group of Cuban exiles who formed their own search-and-rescue missions after a nine-year-old boy died of dehydration on his journey from Cuba. Not everyone agreed with the organization’s hard-line anti-Castro stance, but it won international praise for an amazing recovery record. On average, the group saved one person every two hours of flight time, sparing thousands who might otherwise have perished at sea in their journey to freedom. The organization’s focus seemed to shift, however, after Cuban MiGs shot down two of its planes in 1996. More and more resources went toward printing and distributing anti-Casto leaflets. That was when Alejandro broke off and formed his own group, Brothers for Freedom. Eventually, the better-known Brothers to the Rescue would stop flying altogether. But Alejandro had vowed never to give up. Rescue missions were costly, and private donations were hard to come by, so he used his own money. Brothers for Freedom-and the search for a free Cuba -went on.

  “Brother One, this is Key West. Do you have a location yet?”

  “Copy that. Let me make one more pass and-” He stared out the window toward the horizon, his anger rising at the unmistakable sight of a vessel headed toward the rafters. “Forget it,” Alejandro said into the radio. “Coast Guard’s on its way.”

  Alejandro could hear the disappointment in his own voice, and it seemed ironic even to him. In the early years, the sight of the Coast Guard was a blessing. In fact, he would have radioed for the Coast Guard upon sighting a raft. All that changed with the shift in U.S. immigration policy in 1996. Rafters intercepted at sea were no longer brought to the United States. They were either routed to another country or returned to Cuba. And if they went back to Cuba, it could mean five years in Castro’s prison.

  “Dirty sons of bitches got another one,” said Alejandro.

  “Sorry, Alejandro. You headed back?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Okay. By the way, I got a phone call about twenty minutes ago. There’s a lawyer headed down from Miami to see you. His name is Jack Swyteck.”

  Alejandro adjusted his headset, making sure he’d heard correctly. “Swyteck? Any relation to Harry Swyteck, the former governor?”

  “I believe it’s his son.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He said it’s a legal matter. About your son.”

  Alejandro’s throat tightened. Several weeks had passed since he’d received the kind of news that no parent should have to hear, but it still felt like yesterday. “How is he involved in this?”

  “He was calling on behalf of Lindsey.”

  Lindsey. Lindsey Hart. The Anglo daughter-in-law who in twelve years of marriage had never taken her husband’s Hispanic surname. “Don’t tell me that woman has gone out and hired herself the son of the former governor,” said Alejandro.

  “I’m not sure. I got the sense he wants to talk to you before he takes her case. I told him to come by around two o’clock.”

  Alejandro didn’t answer.

  The radio crackled. “You want me to call him back and tell him to get lost?”

  “No,” said Alejandro. “I’ll meet with him. I think he should hear what I have to say.”

  “Copy that. Be safe, Alejandro.”

  “Roger. See you in about forty minutes.”

  Alejandro stole one last look at the rafters below, his heart sinking as he watched them waving frantically at the rescue plane overhead. Surely they were convinced that they’d reached freedom’s doorstep, that in a few hours they’d be safe and dry in the United States of America. But the U.S. Coast Guard had other designs, and once the border patrol interdicted rafters at sea, there was nothing Alejandro or anyone else could do. It sickened him to turn his plane away, knowing that their brief moment of hope would evaporate as his Cessna disappeared from sight.

  Alejandro’s hand trembled as he reached inside his collar. Hanging around his neck was a gold medallion of the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, the patron saint of Cuba, a good-luck charm of sorts that Cuban relatives in Miami often sent to their relatives in Cuba to keep them safe on their journey to freedom. He’d worn it on his own crossing of the straits in a rowboat, thirty years earlier.

  Sadly, he gave the medallion a kiss and headed home to Key West.

  7

  I love this car,” said Theo.

  Jack glowered from the passenger seat. “It’s mine, and it’s not for sale.”

  Theo slammed it into gear, and the car nearly leapt from the pavement.

  It was a good four hours from Miami to Key West, three if Theo was driving, and he had insisted on it. Owning a thirty-year-old Mustang convertible had its drawbacks, but a drive through the Keys was something any car lover lived for. Mile after mile, U.S. 1 was a scenic ribbon of asphalt that connected one Florida Key to the next, slicing through turquoise waters and one-stoplight towns that seemed to sprout from the mangroves. Plenty of warm sunshine on your face, amazing blue skies, a sea breeze like velvet. The deal was that Theo would drive down and Jack would drive back. A fair compromise, Jack figured, if for nothing else than the sheer entertainment value of having Theo come along.

  “What did you say?” asked Jack. Theo’s mouth was moving, but it was drowned out by the rumble of the engine and whistle of the wind.

  Theo shouted, “If you won’t sell your wheels, at least leave ’em to me.”

  “What do you mean, ‘leave’?”

  “In your will, dude.”

  “I don’t even have a will.”

  “A lawyer with no will? That’s like a hooker with no condoms.”

  “What do I need a will for? I’m a single guy with no kids.”

  They exchanged glances, as if Jack’s mention of “no kids” suddenly had a footnote next to it.

  “Screw the will,” said Theo. “Take it with you. God would love this car.”

  Jack turned back to his reading. Before leaving Miami, he’d jumped on-line and pulled down some background information about the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, just enough to know what he was talking about when he interviewed Lindsey’s father-in-law. Theo left him alone until they reached the Stockton Bridge, about a mile from Key West International Airport.

  “So, you gonna have to go to Camp Geronimo?”

  “Guantánamo, not Geronimo. It’s a naval base, not an Indian burial ground.”

  “How is it we got a naval base in Cuba anyway?”

  Jack checked one of the web pages he’d printed. “Says here we lease it.�
��

  “Castro is our landlord?”

  “Technically, yes.”

  “Shit, what does a guy like Castro do if you’re late on the rent? Kill your entire family?”

  “Actually, he’s never cashed one of our rent checks. The lease was signed long before he came into power, and he refuses to recognize it as valid.”

  “Guess he’s not about to try and evict us.”

  “Not unless he wants a made-in-America boot up his communist ass.”

  “So we stay there for free. But for how long?”

  “The lease says we can stay there as long as we want.”

  “Damn. Whoever drafted that document must be in the lawyers’ hall of fame.”

  They entered the airport off Roosevelt Road and headed toward the general aviation hangars, following the instructions that Jack had gotten over the telephone. A security guard directed them to a fenced parking area. The Brothers for Freedom office was a little box at one of the end hangars that barely had enough room for a desk and two chairs. The man inside escorted them toward the tarmac. A flock of hungry seagulls followed them. Just three feet above sea level, Key West International was notorious for its birds, many of which met the aeronautical version of the Veg-O-Matic with the constant coming and going of prop planes. Jack and Theo passed several rows of private aircraft, everything from seaplanes to Learjets. Finally they spotted Alejandro Pintado tending to his reliable old Cessna. Jack probably could have found the plane without any help at all, as it seemed to be held together by bumper stickers that proclaimed such telling messages as FREE CUBA, NO CASTRO, NO PROBLEM, and I DON’T BELIEVE THE MIAMI TRIBUNE-the latter being a swipe at the “liberal media,” which sometimes criticized the tactics of exiles when it came to fighting Castro.

  “Mr. Pintado?” said Jack.

  A portly man with silver hair dropped his cleaning rag in the bucket, then emerged from beneath the wing. “You must be Jack Swyteck.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who’s your friend here? Barry Bonds on steroids?”

  “This is-”

  “Mikhail Baryshnikov,” said Theo, shaking hands.