Blood Money

by James Grippando

  “I won’t need protection while I’m undercover. I’m no longer Andie Henning.”

  “That may be true, to a point. But I can’t send you undercover knowing that someone may be trying to track you down. That could blow the whole operation.”

  “He won’t find me.”

  “You can’t guarantee that. And he doesn’t have to find you to blow the operation. If he figures out you’re working undercover, that’s enough.”

  Andie knew he was right, and the only solution to the problem was one that she didn’t like. But she was desperate. “What if I was willing to go all-in for the duration of the assignment—no rights to contact anyone, including Jack.”

  “Andie, Operation Big Dredge is budgeted and approved up to five months. I’m not saying it will go that long, but it could.”

  “I understand.”

  “You really want to do that? No phone calls, no nothing for five months?”

  “It’s not my preference,” she said. “But if you pull me because I’m a threat to the integrity of the operation, you and I both know that headquarters will not view this as an isolated incident.”

  “I won’t let you be blackballed.”

  “That’s a really nice sentiment, but getting pulled from an assignment like this is huge. I’ll be damaged goods. So, please: Get on the phone with whoever it is at headquarters who’s pushing your buttons, and tell them I’m willing to go all-in.”

  Schwartz studied her expression, and Andie stared right back at him, conveying nothing but her resolve.

  “All right,” said Schwartz. “I’ll let you know what headquarters says. But before I make that call and put your offer on the table, do you want to talk with your fiancé about it?”

  Andie thought for a moment. Perception was everything in the bureau, and having to check with your fiancé on a decision that could define the rest of your career as an FBI agent was the wrong perception to create. Yes, five months was a long time—but not with someone you planned to spend the rest of your life with.

  “No need,” said Andie. “Jack will understand.”

  I hope.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  BNN had “the exclusive” in time for Faith Corso’s nine P.M. show.

  It began with Corso’s rapid-fire summary of the day’s events, followed by a live update from an on-the-scene reporter in Little Havana’s Tamiami Trail, “where the nude body of Rene Fenning, a beloved pediatrician at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, was discovered late this afternoon.” Jack was relieved to see that law enforcement had been careful not to divulge details that might compromise the investigation: Even BNN had yet to uncover the killer’s signature—“someone you love.” Still, Corso worked in Rene’s past relationship with Jack, coupled with a healthy dose of innuendo as to a current “romantic link.”

  Then it was back live and in-studio for Corso’s big story of the night: the hundred-thousand-dollar payoff to the jury foreman in the Sydney Bennett trial. The graphic behind Corso said it all, yet another slutty photograph of Sydney with a catchy tagline:

  NOT GUILTY: THE PRICE OF INJUSTICE.

  Jack had known the personal attacks were coming five minutes before airtime. Corso’s producer had called him for a comment, which he’d declined to give—which Corso proceeded to use against him on the air.

  “Of course Jack Sly-teck isn’t talking,” Corso told her television audience. “He refused to say a word when we asked him to explain how something like this could happen on his watch. Keeping his mouth shut is probably the smart thing to do in a situation like this. Maybe Shot Mom’s lawyer isn’t quite as dumb as we thought he was.”

  Jack found her easy to stomach compared to the ensuing parade of expert speculators—expeculators, he called them, a play on expectorant that in Jack’s mind put their venom-spitting rhetoric on the level of hacking up a lungful of phlegm. None had the least bit of expertise on the charge of jury tampering, and, from the outset, they disagreed on the most basic question put to them by Corso:

  “Does this mean that Sydney Bennett will stand trial again?” she asked her panel. “Or does double jeopardy preclude a retrial even if a juror was paid off?”

  “Good question,” said Theo. He was on the other end of Jack’s couch, having shown up uninvited about ten minutes after Andie had sent the text saying she was headed to the field office.

  Jack scratched Max’s head. “I know golden retrievers who could answer it more intelligently than these bozos.”

  Theo wasn’t listening. His full attention was on the TV, on Faith Corso’s response to her own question. She did that a lot.

  “Clearly the government is free to bring charges of jury tampering against Mr. Hewitt and whoever bribed him,” said Corso. “But I could easily see Shot Mom hiring a new lawyer who will deny that she had anything to do with the bribe, and who will argue that once a verdict is entered it’s too late for the court to declare a mistrial. Shot Mom was acquitted, period, end of story.”

  Jack snatched the remote from Max’s jaws. “End of story,” he said, scoffing. “Mark your calendar, Theo. You and I will have grandchildren before Faith Corso utters those words again in connection with Sydney Bennett.”

  Theo made a face. “I like you, Swyteck, but I don’t want to have grandchildren with you.”

  Jack rolled his eyes, then checked the time on the TV info banner. With Andie’s help on Celeste’s username and password, Jack had solved the Facebook problem more than two hours before the midnight deadline. There was no telling when Andie would be back, however, which was probably a good thing. She might have tried to talk him out of heading over to the Bennett house and confronting Sydney’s parents about the bribe. Theo not only loved the idea, but he would be Jack’s hedge against a my-word-versus-their-word situation if ever their conversation became an issue.

  “I’ll drive,” said Theo.

  They were in Miami Shores before ten. Jack had visited the Bennett home only once before, and he almost didn’t recognize the place without the battalion of media vans and onlookers in front. The telltale tire ruts in the yard, visible in the glow of a streetlamp, confirmed that they were in the right place. Theo parked in the driveway, and they started up the sidewalk.

  “You want me to do the talking?” asked Theo.

  “You want me to be disbarred?”

  One ring of the bell brought Mr. Bennett to the screen door. Jack wasn’t expecting a warm welcome, and he didn’t get one.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  Geoffrey Bennett was a retired salon owner who, in Jack’s mind, could have been a 1970s TV game-show host—hair too perfect, skin too tan, teeth too white, almost too good-looking. The only photographs Jack had seen of him without his shirt unbuttoned and chest hair showing were from the trial, where both he and his wife had made a point of dressing as if they were on their way to church. “The look” had only fed the rumors, and while Jack had not explicitly mounted the “abuse excuse,” Bennett still held it against him for having done too little to squelch the talk of sexual abuse that had spread from the hallways outside the courtroom to the farthest corners of the Internet. For Jack, Sydney’s murder trial simply wasn’t the place to deal with her father’s battered public image. Bennett, however, had flat-out accused Jack of feeding the rumors in order to build sympathy for Sydney.

  “We need to talk about a certain juror,” said Jack.

  Bennett stared back through the screen door, then glanced at Theo. “Who’s he?”

  “Faith Corso,” said Theo. “My morning-after look. No makeup.”

  “I don’t like smart-asses.”

  “I don’t like chumps who pretend not to know who I am.”

  “Never seen you before, pal.”

  “Me and ‘rot-in-hell’ snuggies was the highlight of the Faith Corso Show on verdict day. How many six-foot-six African American friends you think Jack’s got?”

  Jack gave his friend a sideways glance, telling him to tone it down.
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br />   “This is Theo Knight, my investigator,” said Jack. “Please, may we come in? It’s important.”

  Bennett hesitated another moment, then opened the door. He led them to the family room, offered them a seat on the couch. “Is your wife home?” asked Jack. “I’d like her to be part of this.”

  “This is all very upsetting to her,” said Bennett.

  “I’m sensitive to that,” said Jack.

  Bennett stared back at him for a moment. “I’ll see if she’s up to it,” he said. He headed down the hall toward the bedroom.

  “Faith Corso’s morning-after look?” Jack muttered beneath his breath.

  “He deserved it. Like he doesn’t know who I am.”

  “If we tick him off, he’ll just tell us to get lost.”

  “If we don’t call him out at the first sign of bullshit, we’ll get nothing but bullshit. You watch. He’s a scumbag liar who doesn’t know who I am, doesn’t know where his daughter is, doesn’t know what happened to his granddaughter, doesn’t know nothing about nobody.”

  “Can I offer you fellas something to drink?” Mrs. Bennett asked as she entered the room.

  Jack rose and prompted Theo to do the same. “No, thanks,” said Jack.

  The Bennetts sat in the matching armchairs on the other side of the coffee table, facing Jack. Jack noted the collection of framed photographs, all of Emma, on the wall behind them. He tried not to be obvious, but as he lowered himself back to the couch, Jack’s gaze swept the room. Not a single photograph of Sydney anywhere, as far as he could tell.

  “Geoffrey and I watched the Faith Corso Show,” she said. “Other than the times we saw him in the courtroom, we have no idea who this Brian Hewitt is.”

  “To put a finer point on it, we didn’t buy off a juror,” said Mr. Bennett. “Anybody who thinks I have an extra hundred thousand dollars in cash lying around is out of his mind.”

  “Not that we would do it even if we had the money, of course,” said Ellen Bennett.

  Her husband shook his head, frustrated. “Ellen, why would you even add that? It goes without saying. Those are the kind of stupid things that need to stop coming out of your mouth.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Theo sat forward, placed his hands on his thighs in a way that gave him the shoulders of a defensive tackle. “I didn’t think it was stupid,” he said, his glare practically burning a hole through Bennett’s skull.

  “I don’t care what you think,” said Bennett.

  Jack reached across the couch, guiding Theo back into a less threatening position. “Let’s keep this cordial, if we can. Does that sound good to everyone?”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Ellen. The men didn’t answer.

  “Good,” said Jack.

  Bennett asked, “Did you buy him off?”

  “Geoffrey,” said his wife, bristling.

  “Quiet, Ellen.”

  Jack checked Theo back into place with a hand gesture. “It’s a fair question,” said Jack. “The answer is no.”

  “But we would’ve, if we had the money,” said Theo, speaking in a tone that said, Fuckhead.

  “Let’s all chill for a second,” said Jack, “and assume everyone in this room is telling the truth. You didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. Who did?”

  “Obviously not Sydney,” said Ellen.

  “Well, is it that obvious?” said Jack.

  “To me it is,” said Ellen.

  “Let me tell you why it’s not to me,” said Jack. “Let’s start with this simple question: Where is Sydney?”

  “We don’t know,” said Bennett. “That was true when your FBI girlfriend came here last week asking questions, and it’s true now.”

  “Okay, let’s assume that’s the case,” said Jack. “Nobody in this room knows where Sydney is. But here’s what we do know. Somebody paid Celeste a thousand dollars to show up the night of Sydney’s release dressed up and looking like Sydney. Somebody paid for a private airplane to fly Sydney out of Miami. Since then, somebody has been paying a lot of money to keep Sydney out of sight—that doesn’t just happen for free. And tonight, somebody plunked down a hundred thousand dollars to pay off a juror. Altogether, we’re talking well into six figures. Maybe north of a quarter million, depending on where she’s hiding, whether she’s moving from one place to the next in order to stay one step ahead of the media, what kind of lifestyle she’s leading.”

  “Which makes my point,” said Bennett. “It’s not us, and it’s not Sydney. We don’t have that kind of dough.”

  Bennett’s answers were a match for the low expectations Jack had brought to the meeting, but he still needed to ask the question that was at the heart of the matter. “Who’s the young man who met her on the runway at Opa-locka Airport?”

  “No idea,” said Bennett.

  “Here’s my trouble with that answer,” said Jack. “When you and I talked about Sydney’s release, it was my impression that you were paying for the airplane.”

  “I never said that. I told you what Sydney told me—that there would be a plane waiting for her, and there was no refund if you didn’t get her there before two A.M.”

  “I took that to mean you were footing the bill.”

  “You took it wrong,” said Bennett.

  “Then who did pay for it?” asked Jack.

  “I have no idea,” said Bennett.

  Jack and Theo exchanged glances, and Jack could almost hear the refrain: scumbag liar.

  Theo said, “You might as well tell us. I got contacts at the airport. I’m gonna get a name.”

  “Good,” said Bennett. “When you get it, you call me. Because like I said: I have no idea.”

  “Let me make sure I understand,” said Jack. “Your daughter gets out of jail, it’s a national media circus, and some people are even threatening her life. She gets on a private plane in the middle of the night, you don’t know who paid for it, don’t know who met her at the airport, don’t know where he took her—and you still have no idea where she is. That’s what you’re telling me?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” said Bennett.

  Jack glanced at Mrs. Bennett. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Yes, she is,” said Bennett, answering for her.

  “Jack was askin’ your wife,” said Theo.

  She glanced at her husband, then at Jack. “Well, you know, we have—”

  “Ellen,” said Bennett.

  She pursed her lips, the words coming like a reflex: “We don’t know,” she said.

  Jack let her response hang in the air, watching her, seeing her discomfort. “It’s a funny thing,” said Jack. “Going all the way back to day one as Sydney’s lawyer, I’ve never had a one-on-one conversation with Ellen. It’s always been me, Ellen, and you.”

  “With good reason,” said Bennett.

  Jack’s gaze remained fixed on Mrs. Bennett. He knew it would lead nowhere, but he wanted to plant the seed. “Do you think that would be possible—a conversation, just the two of us?”

  “No,” said Mr. Bennett.

  Theo was again on the verge of eruption. “Jack was talking to—”

  “I don’t care who he’s talking to,” said Bennett. “Look, you two come into my house, acting like we have all the answers, like this is easy for us. Do you have any idea how many medications Ellen has taken over the last three years, Mr. Swyteck? Do you know what it’s like to be afraid to step outside your house, to have to run back to your car and get away from reporters every time you go to the grocery story?”

  “It has to be tough, I know.”

  “No, you don’t know. This has been more than Ellen can bear. So you can think whatever you want about why I do the talking. But you, Faith Corso, and everyone else in this screwed-up world who wants time alone with Ellen can just shove it. I am not going to let you take my wife into some back room, tear her down, and push her back into depression, all to serve your own agenda. At some point a man has to step in and protect
what’s left of his family.”

  “I just want to have a conversation,” said Jack.

  “No, you don’t,” said Bennett. “Everyone in this room knows that this Brian Hewitt is going to point his finger at someone. Maybe your interests will align with ours, Mr. Swyteck. Or maybe they won’t. Tomorrow morning I’m calling an attorney to represent Ellen and me, and I’m sure the first thing he’ll tell us is don’t talk to anyone. I’ve been far more accommodating to you than necessary. This has gone on long enough, gentlemen.”

  Bennett rose. Jack and Theo stayed in their seats.

  “The conversation is over,” said Bennett, his tone firmer.

  Slowly, Jack and Theo rose. Jack thanked Mrs. Bennett, and then he and Theo followed her husband to the foyer. They stopped before opening the screen door.

  “Be sure to pass along to your girlfriend what I just told you,” said Bennett. “If the FBI wants to question us again, she should call our lawyer.”

  “That’s your right,” said Jack.

  Bennett opened the door, showing them out. The screen door closed behind them. “Might not be a bad idea for you to get yourself a lawyer, too,” Bennett said through the screen. “You just never know who Mr. Hewitt might implicate.”

  It didn’t sound like a threat, but it didn’t sound like an idle observation, either. It was somewhere in between.

  “Very true,” said Jack. “You never know.”

  He started down the front steps, Theo at his side. The porch light went black before they reached the driveway.

  “Scumbag liar,” said Theo as they got into the car. “Protect his family. Right.”

  “Ellen Bennett is a mess. You can look at her and see it.”

  “And we’re supposed to believe it’s all about fear of the media? Come on. Fear of sumptin’, but it ain’t the media. Those walls he put up around her ain’t for her benefit.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why’d you just sit there like you’re buying into it. I told you, man. You gotta call a scumbag a scumbag. You can’t let him win.”

  “He didn’t win.”

  “He did by the count on my scorecard.”