Hear No Evil

by James Grippando

  Lindsey’s pallor was as lifeless as the cold beige walls of the detention center. She looked the way Jack felt, and she hadn’t been the one drinking all night. Her elbows were on the table, her head was in the palms of her hands. The newspaper article was spread out in front of her. They were alone, behind a locked door in a windowless room that was reserved for attorney-client communications.

  “Who’s the source for the article?” asked Lindsey.

  “Don’t know,” said Jack.

  “Who do you think it is?”

  “No idea. I was listening to Cuban radio on the way over here. They think it’s Castro.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  She got up from her chair and stepped away from the table. She began to pace slowly, just a few steps in each direction, as the room was small. “You think it could be true? You think Johnson is dealing with the U.S. attorney?”

  “I phoned Hector Torres on the way over here. He wouldn’t take my call.”

  “Then it must be true,” she said, her voice quickening. “They’re talking.”

  “I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion.”

  “You don’t know Damont. Deep down, he’s a survivor.”

  “Survivor or not, he has a long way to go to earn the trust of a federal prosecutor.”

  “Torres is a slimeball. He won’t care how slippery Johnson seems, as long as he wiggles in his direction.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Jack. “If Johnson is going to be of any use at all to the prosecution, he has to say that you shot your husband. Problem is, he’s already testified under oath that he was in your house that morning and that your son confessed to the crime. Those are hardly reconcilable.”

  She stopped pacing and looked Jack in the eye. “They’re completely reconcilable.”

  Jack was taken aback by her glare. “How do you mean?”

  “Brian confessed to the crime because…”

  “Because why?”

  “Because he thought he was covering for me.”

  Jack’s pulse quickened. “Was he?”

  She drew a breath and turned away

  Jack said, “Was Brian covering for his mother, Lindsey?”

  She still didn’t answer, wouldn’t look at him.

  Jack’s voice took on an edge. “I want the truth this time, damnit. No more lies. You tell me the truth, and maybe I can work something out with Torres. You keep on lying, I guarantee you’ll die by lethal injection.”

  She turned and faced him, her eyes glistening with tears. “Brian didn’t kill Oscar. But neither did I.”

  “Then what did happen?”

  She drew a breath, collecting herself. “Most of what you heard about Oscar was true. He was an awful man, awful to me, awful to Brian. We fought a lot, and Brian was the one who suffered. The thing with the headphones and Brian’s loss of hearing-that’s all true.”

  “Is that where the truth ends? Everything else you told the jury was a lie?”

  “No. Not by a long shot. The sex. Oscar and Johnson and me. I was telling the truth about that, too. He gave me a club drug or something. That’s how it all got started.”

  “It wasn’t something you wanted to do?”

  “No. Not at all.” She paused, then added, “Not at first.”

  Jack nearly had to shake his head, make sure he’d heard that right. “What do you mean, ‘not at first’?”

  She was suddenly less misty, more defensive. “What do you think it means, Jack? It means I didn’t like it at first, but my feelings changed over time.”

  “So what are you saying? You were abused and fell into some low self-esteem psychological-”

  “I’m not making any bullshit Stockholm syndrome excuses, Jack. My feelings never changed about the three-way stuff. My feelings toward Damont-that’s what changed.”

  “You liked having sex with him?”

  “It went beyond that. I liked him.”

  “How did Oscar feel about that?”

  “Ask the fertility doctor, the government’s expert. He told the jury all about Oscar’s assassin sperm count, his jealousy over my infidelity. What the doctor didn’t realize was that Oscar wasn’t jealous in the normal sense. He just didn’t like it that Damont and I started to do it on our own terms.”

  “It was something Oscar could no longer control. Was that it?”

  She shook her head and chuckled, but it was mirthless. “The only time Oscar was ever happy was when he had everything and everybody under control. He got his rocks off watching Damont and me go at it. He scored points with his daddy by getting all Coast Guard routing information from Damont and feeding it to Brothers for Freedom. And I was the pornographic quid pro quo he used to pay back his buddy Damont for all that secret information.”

  “And then things fell apart,” said Jack.

  “Of course. But Damont is the one who came up with the solution, not me.”

  “You two had a plan?”

  She nodded slowly. “I went to work at the hospital that morning, and I called Damont, just like he told the jury I did. But I wasn’t trying to lure him over to the house and set him up for a murder that had already gone down. It was all just part of the plan. I told him, ‘Go on over, Damont. Door’s unlocked. Brian’s asleep for another forty-five minutes. Oscar’s asleep in the bedroom. Do what you gotta do.’ ”

  Jack felt numb for a second. “So Johnson went?”

  “Yeah. Just like that Cuban soldier said he did.”

  “Then what?”

  “He went straight to the bedroom. He found Oscar’s gun right where I told him it would be. And then…”

  “He shot him?”

  She seemed to struggle, then said, “Yeah. He shot him.”

  Jack paused. He wasn’t sure why. It just seemed like the fitting thing to do upon the mention of someone’s untimely death. “But wait a minute,” said Jack. “At some point he talked to Brian, right?”

  “Right. That was when things started to go wrong. See, Damont and I didn’t think Brian would hear the gunshot. But something woke him. The vibration of footsteps on the wood floor, maybe a light going on. Whatever it was-Brian sensed that something was happening.”

  “But if Brian got up and he saw Johnson standing over Oscar’s body, he would have known that Johnson shot him, right?”

  “Except that he didn’t see Johnson. Damont heard Brian’s bedroom door open before Brian stepped into the hallway. Damont hid in the closet. All Brian saw when he came in the bedroom was Oscar all bloody and lying on the bed.”

  “Is that when Brian called you at work?”

  “Yes. And then he went back in his room, too scared to come out until I got there.”

  “What did Johnson do?”

  “When he heard Brian’s door close, he came out of the closet and ran out of the house. But then, this is where he finally got clever. He waited a minute or two, then walked back in the house and went straight to Brian’s room. He was acting all excited, told Brian that I had called him and asked him to come over, that something had happened to Oscar. Poor Brian, he just freaked. He didn’t know what to do. He got all flustered and figured that I had shot Oscar. He knew how much Oscar and I had been fighting; he knew how abusive Oscar was. He knew if I’d done it, that Oscar had deserved it.”

  “So Brian told Johnson-”

  “Right,” said Lindsey. “Brian said he had done it. I guess he figured a ten-year-old boy wouldn’t go to jail. But his mommy would. He thought he was protecting me.” She was leaning against the wall, as if exhausted, her eyes cast downward. “That’s the truth, Jack. That’s the way it really happened. Damont and I weren’t sure which one of us might eventually get charged. But we agreed up front, if either of us was, we wouldn’t point the finger at the other. If push came to shove…”

  “You’d blame it on Brian.”

  She folded her arms tightly, withdrawing a bit, as if Jack had hit below the belt by saying it aloud.
<
br />   Jack said, “That was all just a dance that you and Johnson did in the courtroom. His accusing Brian, your breaking down and saying it was all a lie. Nice touch, Lindsey. All the more believable if the mother stands up and defends her son.”

  “I’m not proud of that,” she said.

  Jack looked off to the middle distance. He could have gone through the entire alphabet, A to Z, listing the things she shouldn’t have been proud of. But he wasn’t here to lecture. He was here to keep her off death row. “What brought it all to a head, anyway?” said Jack. “How did Johnson finally decide that it was time for Oscar to go?”

  She seemed relieved to have another question, anything to release her from the painful silence of self-reflection. She forced a little smile and said, “Ah, now that’s where the story gets very Miami.”

  56

  Jack went straight from the prison to Theo’s apartment. His friend was just about ready to head down to Sparky’s Tavern to set up for the lunch crowd when Jack caught up with him. Theo sat on a bar stool at the kitchen counter and listened for almost ten minutes without interruption-a record for him-as Jack recounted his entire conversation with Lindsey. Since Theo was his investigator, Jack didn’t have to worry about breaching any privileges. More important, he was able to give his friend complete vindication on his theory about who torched Jack’s Mustang.

  “Johnson was definitely in with druggies,” said Jack.

  “I knew it!” said Theo as he slapped the countertop.

  “He was feeding information about Coast Guard routes to Oscar, who then passed it along to his old man.”

  “Don’t tell me Alejandro Pintado is a trafficker.”

  “No, no way. Two totally distinct things were going on here. Pintado used Johnson’s information strictly to avoid border patrol and help Cuban rafters get to shore. But it was Johnson who realized that the drug trade would pay handsomely for the same information. So he started selling it to them.”

  Theo nodded, seeing where this was headed. “And Oscar found out about it.”

  “Yup.”

  “And then Oscar had to go.”

  “You got it,” said Jack. “To think I nearly played the drug card at trial. I probably would have, had I thought the jury wouldn’t lynch me for calling the Pintados a bunch of cocaine traffickers. Turns out Oscar got himself killed doing the honorable thing, saying no to drugs. Go figure.”

  “Hindsight, Jacko. It all works out in the end.” Theo popped another mini-doughnut into his mouth, his tenth since Jack had started talking. Powdered sugar was everywhere. All this talk of drugs, the countertop was beginning to look like a snort fest in a South Beach nightclub.

  “Still not sure ’bout sumptin’,” said Theo, his mouth still full. “Why’d the drug folks torch your car?”

  “Well, we knew from the start that whoever it was didn’t want to see Lindsey acquitted.”

  “Why would the druggies care?”

  “All I can figure is that they were happier to see Lindsey go down for murder than Lieutenant Johnson. Keeping Johnson out of jail was the only way to make sure he kept feeding them the information they needed.”

  “Interesting,” said Theo, mulling it all over. “So bottom line is, Oscar might still be alive if he didn’t go snooping around and find out what else his friend Damont was doing with the Coast Guard secrets.”

  “That’s about the size of it. Tough break for Captain Pintado.”

  “You kidding me?” said Theo. “He’s the lucky one.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “That article in today’s newspaper-don’t you remember? It said Lieutenant Johnson is talking to the U.S. attorney, looking to tell all. What do you think these drug folks are gonna do when they read that? Sit around and wait to see if dumbass Damont names some names or not?”

  Jack almost smiled. He hadn’t thought of that, but it was the kind of thing Theo was usually right about. “Guess I wouldn’t want to be Lieutenant Damont Johnson right now.”

  “Shee-it,” said Theo. “You don’t want to know Lieutenant Damont Johnson right now.”

  One gentle wave after another broke about twenty yards offshore. Thin sheets of emerald green water rolled up like a tarp onto Hallandale Beach, churned into white foam where the wet sand gave way to powder, and then retreated into the Atlantic. It was six A.M., and Marvin Schwartz was up with the sun, dressed in his usual Sunday morning uniform: rubber-soled sandals, white cotton chinos rolled up to the knee, long-sleeved gossamer shirt, broad-rimmed straw hat. Early Sunday morning was usually his best hunting time; Saturday night revelers had been known to leave behind everything from pocket change to Rolex watches. Actually, it wasn’t a real Rolex, but the boys back at the Golden Beach condo didn’t know a good knockoff from the real McCoy anyway.

  The chirping of seagulls gave way to the beep of his metal detector. He marked the spot mentally, then knelt down and dug away the sand with a serving spoon he’d borrowed from the cole slaw bin at Pumpernickel’s Deli in 1986.

  The disappointment was etched all over his sun-weathered face. A bottle cap. The ninth one this morning. Not a good day so far.

  “Mah-vin. You find my diamond earrings yet?” It was his wife shouting from her chaise lounge at the cabana. She looked like a big beach ball from this distance, five feet wide and five feet tall.

  “No, dear,” he mumbled, making no effort to speak in a voice loud enough to be heard.

  “Ten years you been lookin’. Still no diamond earrings?”

  “No, dear.”

  Diamond earrings, he thought, scoffing. She wants diamond earrings, she should have listened to her mother and married Dr. Moneybags.

  He was climbing over a big clump of seaweed when the metal detector suddenly went berserk, chirping and beeping wildly. He moved the wand to the left, and the chirping stopped. He moved it back to the right, and it was sounding off like a carnival again. He smiled, his heart racing with excitement. He poked through the strands of seaweed. Barnacles and other shellfish were all over the place. A piece of driftwood was all he could find, but there had to be something metal in there somewhere. He pushed away more seaweed, then stopped. The morning sun caught the gold, and the utter beauty of that reflection sent chills down his spine.

  A ring!

  He knelt down for a closer look. It looked like a Super Bowl ring at first, so big and ostentatious. As he reached to pick it up, he noticed the engraving on the side, and the prominent “ U.S. ” insignia told him that it was from one of the academies.

  A Coast Guard ring.

  He grabbed it, lifted it, then dropped it on the spot, recoiling quickly. The ring was still attached to a finger. The finger was still attached to a blackish-purple hand.

  The hand had been severed at the wrist.

  “Sheila!” He dropped his metal detector, jumped to his feet, and wobbled back the cabana as fast as his bony legs would carry him, shouting over and over again at the top of his lungs, “SHEEEI-LAH!”

  Epilogue

  The Miami-Dade County medical examiner described it as “Foreign matter, triangular-shaped cartilaginous material, 2.5 cm × 2.3 cm × 2.7 cm, embedded in the palm of the left hand of an African American male.” A marine biologist confirmed that it was a shark’s tooth. Fingerprint and DNA analysis confirmed that it was in the left hand of Lieutenant Damont Johnson. No other body parts were recovered, so the rest of the story was conjecture. But the possibilities weren’t exactly endless: Either he’d decided to swim with a school of hammerheads, or someone had used him for shark bait.

  Lindsey told the prosecutor all that she knew about Johnson’s drug trafficker connections. Jack made sure that her proffer implicated only the guilty parties, namely her and Lieutenant Johnson, and not Brothers for Freedom or the Pintado family. Since she hadn’t dealt directly with the druggies, she wasn’t able to offer any specifics that might help law enforcement track down Johnson’s killers. Still, it was useful enough to persuade the prosecutor to back awa
y from the death penalty. Judge Garcia followed the government’s recommendation and sentenced Lindsey to life in prison. Lindsey didn’t seem to think a life sentence was fair, since she wasn’t the trigger person, but she’d have a chance to draw her nice distinctions between murder and conspiracy to commit murder at her parole hearing in about sixteen years.

  Jack decided to have no contact with Brian or the Pintado family until he felt that the time was right. On the first Saturday morning after Lindsey’s sentencing, that time had come. He and Theo drove to Coral Reef Park, where Brian played intramural soccer.

  “You sure you want to do this?” asked Theo as they walked across the parking lot.

  “Positive,” said Jack.

  They followed the wood-chip footpath past several playing fields. Jack glanced at the different games that were being played simultaneously, one field after another. It was like a stroll through the sporting life of a child, everything from the four-to six-year-olds, where a few kids hustled after the ball while others picked flowers, to the middle-schoolers, who were already starting to play like future Olympians. Jack and Theo stopped at the south field.

  Jack spotted Alejandro Pintado seated in a lawn chair on the sidelines, and he knew he was in the right place. He and Theo found a spot about twenty yards down the line and watched some of the game, blue jerseys versus yellow jerseys.

  “That’s Brian over there, isn’t it?” said Theo. “Goalie for the blue team?”

  Jack looked toward the net, and he smiled. “Yeah. That’s him.” Jack watched him make a couple of nice saves, then turned at the sound of Alejandro’s voice, startled to see that he’d come over to talk.

  “You just a big soccer fan, Jack?” said Alejandro. “Or do you have a kid out here, too?”

  Jack wondered if he had any idea how ironic the question was. “Actually, I came to see you.”

  “In the middle of my grandson’s soccer game?”

  “I wanted to catch you at a time and place where I could see Brian do something other than testify in a courtroom. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Depends on what it’s about.”