by Todd Merer
“Sorry,” he said. “We’re closing early.”
The wind hit us as we left. The sky looked ominous. In the fading light, rain bands veiled the far side of the bay. Mady took my arm.
“I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
“You won’t,” I said. “I’ll be with you.”
I still hadn’t been inside Casita Azul. It was the last wall standing between us, and the first place we would be alone.
“It took me a long time to get over you, Benn. Finally, I got happy again, but then you came back. Now I don’t know what to think. I mean, I know what I want . . . Promise me something.”
“Anything. I’ll even give you Arpege.”
“No jokes. I couldn’t be more serious. I need to hear something from you. A promise that you really have changed. No more getting wasted. No more running around. Most of all, no more criminals. Not ever. Never. Promise me that, Benn.”
“I promise,” I said.
It was the strangest moment of my life. I’d never been happier and never more frightened. Happy because the love of my life was back; frightened because I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep her.
We walked hand in hand. As we rounded a corner, the wind nearly took us and we laughed. Her laughter was genuine, but mine was forced. I escorted her to Casita Azul. Told her to start securing things; I was going to the hotel for my stuff. I’d return in fifteen minutes.
She kissed me on the mouth. “Hurry, Benn.”
I hurried. The city was empty. No vehicles, no people. I went up Caleta de las Monjas. Not a soul in sight; even the ubiquitous stray cats were sheltering. The street lamps flickered. The Convento was battening down. I went to my room, stuffed things into my bag. As I hurried back down the Caleta, I sensed a presence behind me.
I turned—something struck my head.
And I tumbled into darkness.
CHAPTER 83
I was at the bottom of a well. I tried to climb out, but the walls were too smooth to grasp. I tried and tried again, each time slipping back into blackness . . . then, briefly, I saw daylight—
But only for a moment before I was shoved into the trunk of a vehicle. The hatch slammed shut. Darkness again. Abrupt movement. Gravitational pulls. The vehicle bounced through a pothole, and the trunk popped open a few inches. I tried opening it the rest of the way, but the handle was secured by a rope to the bumper. Rain slashed within the trunk. The wind keened. I saw angels dancing atop pins . . .
True. We’d come to a place I’d often strolled below Morro: the seaside cemetery of Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis, where stone-carved angels cavorted beneath eternal lights, oblivious to the screaming wind and roar of the sea. Through the rain stood the blurred, dark mass of Morro—
The trunk opened.
“Do what I say,” a man said, his voice familiar. A gun jammed against my side. I frog-marched ahead of the man, through the deserted cemetery, toward Morro. I knew it, too, would be deserted. On its promontory, it was exposed to incoming storms: no watchmen would stand guard on this night.
The man wanted to be alone with me.
We climbed stone steps leading to the top level of the fort—the enfilade wall, notched with cannon emplacements. The storm was furious here as it came wheeling in from the sea, but the man guided me into the lee of the fortifications, where it was relatively calm—
I saw his face: broad, under a balding pate. His gap-toothed smile. Traum had been a cop for a long time. He knew how to handle suspects. A few deft pokes and kicks moved me face-first against a wall, my arms akimbo, legs splayed. My face was turned toward the cemetery, its bright angels dancing in the fury.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought we had a deal.”
“Twenty mil’s chump change. The score’s the gold.”
“What gold?”
“No more games, Benn. Scally traced the bitch’s money. The Russians got most of her cash, but not before she put a big chunk of it in gold. Where is it? Tell me, or you’re meat.”
“I don’t know.”
“Benn, I know you know. Borg told us he quit Jilly, and you took over as her lawyer.”
I understood now. Traum had hooked up with Scally to get the gold. They wouldn’t believe my denial. I needed to buy time.
“It’s in New York,” I said. “I can take you to it.”
“You lie. It’s here. It’s why you came to PR.”
“I’ll deal. I have a piece in my pocket.”
Traum was good. His gun stayed hard against me as he patted me down and undid a cargo pocket and took out the acrylic-embedded golden horseshoe. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it in his hand.
“What is this thing?” he said.
“Look in it. Inside it.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“It’s gold. A sample.”
“The fuck you talking?”
“I’ll show you. Let me move my arm. Let me hold the thing, and I’ll show you. I just want out of this deal. I’ll take you to the gold if you let me walk. It’s the same gold as in the slab. I’ll show you.”
The slab moved into my vision, and I gripped it. The lit angels refracted through its scratched, acrylic surface, the golden horseshoe within gleaming dully.
“See,” I said. “See?”
He sighed in a way I recognized as the wheeze of pure greed. Ugly sound. Been there, done that myself the first time I saw a fortune, my entire consciousness contracting to the object of my desire.
Happened to Traum, too. The gun eased.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” I said.
“Beautiful. How much—”
I slammed the slab against his cheekbone. The wind smothered the sound of the blow, but I was sure I felt bone crunch. The gun left my body, and Traum hunched, holding his face.
For a millisecond, I hesitated: Fight, or flight?
A no-brainer. Run, and Traum and Scally keep on looking for me, and I keep on looking over my shoulder until sooner or later, they find me again. No. I needed to end it now and forever. The realization was like pouring gasoline on a fire: a sudden flare.
Kill him.
I raised the slab and brought the edge down atop Traum’s head—hard. He crumpled to his knees, dropping the gun. I struck him again, and again and again, until his head was pulp and he lay still—
Something jittered in my pocket. My cellular. I took it out. I recognized the caller. Mady. I answered, but the call was lost. I clicked her number to call her back, but the signal was gone. Better not waste time here. Better I hustle to Casita Azul.
But first . . .
Traum lay with his face in profile, one wide-open eye staring at me. I bent and gripped his arms and dragged him to the cannon notches. The wind screamed; below, the sea crashed.
I pulled and pushed him through the notch.
Watched him fall into the dark maelstrom.
I’d killed again. No regrets. Again.
CHAPTER 84
The old city was deserted, eerily still. Stars twinkled in the clear sky above, but the horizon in all directions was dark, veined by lightning. It was like being beneath a doughnut hole. The hurricane’s eye.
I felt as if I were floating over the blue cobblestones. My present was past. I lived for my future. For the first time, I knew what it was.
A woman.
Not poor, lost Jilly, whom I no longer desired.
Not Laura Astorquiza, lost wanderer in a world of evil.
Only the love of my life. Madaleina Andaluz. Waiting, for me . . .
Casita Azul was dark, shuttered. I rapped on Mady’s door. Nothing. I called her name. No reply. I tried calling her. The line was still dead. The wind began howling again.
When I hadn’t returned promptly as promised, Mady might have thought something had happened to me. Maybe she had gone looking, and something had happened to her.
I started running again. The streets were empty. I had no idea where Mady might be, nor where I was running. The storm w
as in full fury when I staggered into the lobby of Convento. The staff was gone but for a single bellhop. Diego? The one who’d outed my New Year’s presence to Mady.
“Is my wife . . . Mady, is she here?”
“No, sir. Hey, don’t go outside . . .”
The police station was closed. Not a shop was open. No people. The wind was a torturous scream in wires hanging from twisted posts. I ran and walked and ran in the storm until it had passed and then some. Desperate. Delirious. Hallucinating that there was a world in which I belonged. There wasn’t.
I was the last zombie.
The next morning, wooden shutters were splintered and some streets flooded, but otherwise, Viejo San Juan was intact. The Spanish had built low, thick-walled structures that had survived many hurricanes over the centuries: this one would be a mere footnote in its meteorological history.
I returned to her house. On her corner, a few early risers were gathered where cop cruisers straddled the street. An ambulance rolled down from Morro. I stood there, watching, as innocent as the next man.
“They say a man fell,” someone said.
“An American,” another man said.
“Named Traum,” said a third.
I felt eyes on me. When I looked up across the street, I saw Mady watching me.
I went to her. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face pale. I went to hold her, but she interposed a hand. “No, Benn. Just listen. Please . . .”
“I’m listening.”
“When you didn’t show up, I thought you were hurt. I went looking for you, up and down the streets. Until just minutes ago, I was so worried. I heard a man had been found. I thought it was you.” Tears filled her eyes.
“No, I’m—”
“I saw the dead’s man’s face. It wasn’t you . . . but it was you. Please, don’t explain. I don’t know or care what happened. It’s enough knowing who you were with. I never liked that man. But everything for a reason. His death made me realize I don’t like you, either. I love you and I always will, but it’s tomorrow that counts. Who and what you are then. But Benn, my beautiful boy, Benn, you are always going to be you and do what you do, and there’s nothing else to say.”
“Mady, please listen to me.”
“If you care, leave it at that.”
“I care too much to leave it.”
“No more, Benn. It’s over.”
She walked to Casita Azul and entered. The door closed with a thud of heavy tropical hardwoods. I stared at it. The seventeenth-century crucifix above the door. The fan palms bordering the walkway. The blue stucco facade and lantern-lit windows. Mady’s life. No room in it for me . . .
Leave it at that.
CHAPTER 85
Wednesday, July 1. My neighbors had evacuated to the Hamptons, and the Upper East Side was a ghost town. But when Val drove into Brooklyn, the city came alive. Parks and avenues were crowded with citizens like those I’d be selecting for Joaquin Bolivar’s jury. The anonymous population that would produce a panel that would come to a verdict that would determine the course of many lives: mine, Bolivar’s, maybe Jilly’s, and those of countless others, known and unknown. Big cases tend to shake up the status quo in the drug hierarchies. Lots of people disappear. Others wind up splashed on front-page accounts of turf wars or government sweeps or guerrilla attacks. This case, which was so much more important, would most likely be tried in an empty courtroom.
My shoulders were loose, my mind clear. I was moving on the balls of my feet. Ready to rock and sock. I was the man with the golden tongue.
I sat alone at the defense table. Across from me, Kandi Kauffman was pretending absorption in her trial loose-leaf. Cano was texting. Scally winked hello.
I blew him a kiss. Weird Benn. Let the opposition think I’m off my rocker. I am, anyway. After spotting Cano tailing Traum, I’d dismissed Scally as Traum’s source. But now I knew they’d been partners. So maybe Cano had tailed Traum to make sure he was being righteous. For sure, Cano had a piece of the action.
Kandi’s eyes flicked sideways. An instant later, Bolivar sat beside me. Scally and Cano sat with Kandi. Two bent cops. Fortunately, they couldn’t connect me to Traum’s death. Traum had failed, but soon enough, Scally would come to me.
Gold. Tons of gold.
Had Rafe, playing with Jilly’s money while high, succumbed to gold fever? Surely, Jilly hadn’t bought the gold herself; she probably couldn’t balance a checkbook—
“All rise!”
And so began what I knew—no matter the outcome—was going to be my last trial.
Jury selection in federal court is fairly brief. In the state courts, lawyers often take days to select a jury, but in federal court, only the judge decides whether a prospective juror should be disqualified for cause.
Besides disqualification for cause, prospective jurors could be removed simply because either the defense or the prosecution didn’t like them. These removals were known as strikes. Both sides had the same limited number. Getting an impression of a prospective juror was limited to a quick read: trying to discern whether blue collars didn’t conceal rednecks or bearded old hippies weren’t really closeted Fox News addicts.
For some lawyers, federal jury selection is an art form. They hire jury-selection experts. Psychologists. Number crunchers. I just go with my gut. Occasionally, if a prospective is attractive, I trust my dick. None of it means a thing. You can’t read people’s heads by what they do or look like. When it comes to exercising power over another person’s future, there’s no telling what privacies influence which mind.
My only other rule about jurors is to ignore them. Make believe they’re not there. Work as if they’re an unseen audience, the fourth wall.
By early afternoon, sixteen jurors—twelve on the panel and four alternates—had been selected and sworn in: the usual mix of citizens from all walks of society. Right now they were ciphers, but after a few days of observing body language and covert glances, I’d have myself a good idea which were leaders and which were followers. Not that I’d have the slightest notion which way the leaders were leaning.
The close of jury selection meant the trial had officially begun. Which in turn meant that the deadline had passed for Kandi to turn over 3500 material.
Trieant told the jurors to report at nine in the morning of July 6. When the jurors left, Trieant glared at Kandi and me. “Anything to discuss?”
Usually at this point, there are many evidentiary issues to hash out, but this case was procedurally simple. Law enforcement and forensics would testify about the seizure and composition of the weed, then Scally and the four coconspirator witnesses would testify as to their knowledge of events.
“Nothing from the government, Your Honor.”
“Nothing from the defense, either,” I said.
“All rise!” Judge Trieant doddered out.
“I’m so gonna enjoy this,” Kandi said.
When she was out of earshot, Bolivar whispered, “I need for you to visit me before trial. I’ll tell you when. You got that? You hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“Then say so.”
When I got into the Flex, I was about to tell Val to take me back to the city, but decided I wasn’t in the mood for a solo lunch in an empty restaurant. It occurred to me this was not only my last trial; it very possibly was the last time I’d have downtime in Brooklyn.
I told Val to drive around, and we traveled through side streets lined with brownstones shadowed by old trees and tenement blocks where people were dining on fire escapes. I told Val to take a left here, and a right there, and as purple twilight fell, we were back in Manhattan. Just as Val was about to turn off Fifth into my block, he pulled to the curb and sat with his eyes on the rearview mirror.
“What?” I said.
“I thought maybe a car following, but now it gone.”
“Again? The Mercedes?”
“Not a Mercedes.”
“The customized limo—the bulldog?”
; “Not bulldog. Ordinary car. American. Black. Very long antenna. What you call, I don’t know.”
“Unmarked,” I said.
CHAPTER 86
Thursday morning, the city was so quiet, I could hear a bird singing in the lesser billionaire’s hidden garden. Probably imprisoned in a gilded cage.
Like me.
I wasn’t going out. Because Cano and Scally were shadowing me. Or maybe it was SOD agents. Or Russians or Colombians. All of them watching, waiting for me to do something, or for something to happen to me. But I wasn’t playing fisherman, and I wasn’t baitfish. I was just staying home, chilling.
Ignoring whoever was out there, watching, waiting.
Fuck them. Time to work. Four days to trial.
Not that much time, but not a problem. As I’d told Bolivar, his old shipmates told the same story in essentially the same words, to a man nailing him to the cross. The case hinged on their credibility, or lack thereof. I’d crossed coconspirators so many times, I could recite my boilerplate questions chapter and verse:
Isn’t it true that you’re not testifying because it’s the right thing to do, but because you’re hoping to get a sentence reduction?
Working backward: Sunday, I’d rest.
Saturday and Friday, I’d review my cross-examinations of the four cooperators. I’d guide them into agreeing with my simple questions, honing their answers down to a simple yes or no, then suddenly coming at them from another direction . . . like reading a statement from another defendant’s six, then asking him if it was true.
“Yes.”
“And you stated it.”
“Yes.”
“And signed it?”
“Yes.”
I’d ask permission to approach the witness, and Trieant would begrudge it, and I’d show the six to the witness. “That’s your signature right there?”