by Mandy Miller
When a woman stumbles on her way down the steps, landing on her knees, several customers step over her. She closes her eyes, face raised to the sun in supplication.
It’s Beth from the NA meeting.
I resist the urge to run over and help her. “Only you can save you now, sweet Beth.”
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Chapter 25
I spend the next morning hammering out a plea bargain for a court-appointed client. The fee for indigent cases sucks, but it’s better than zippo, and it’s fast money when you can meet them and plead them all on the same day.
The client of the day is Willy Grass, charged with—what else—marijuana possession. Just another moment to add to my notebook of You Can’t Make this Sh…Up observations.
Deal done, I consider my options. I could do some work organizing my very own new office courtesy of Manny. Then again, a day at the beach might be good for my state of mind and my ghostly white skin which makes me look like I just got sprung from the slammer. It has been a while since I’ve played tourist—so the beach it is. I head for the bus stop.
To spite me, my phone vibrates. Gretchen. So much for getting sand between my five toes.
She’s panting, gulping out the words. “Doctors say Zoe’s ready to come home. Doing better. New meds.”
More panting.
“Where are you?”
“On the treadmill.”
“You run?”
Maybe she’s not so bad after all.
“Yeah, but I hate it. Best way to keep the pounds off.”
No, she’s worse.
“If it’s okay, I’ll pick her up this afternoon from ESH.”
“Fine. I’ll call the bondsman to reinstate the bond like the judge ordered.”
Treadmill belt winding down. “I talked to her a few minutes ago.”
Gulping something. Likely some designer alkaline-infused-ionized water or some such ridiculousness marketed to rich people as the a newly improved version of something they can already have for free.
“She sounded nervous.”
“A few days at home and she’ll be fine. But remember, she’s only allowed out of the house for school, church, and medical appointments.”
“I understand. We’ve decided to get a tutor for Zoe instead of sending her back to St. Paul’s, so that’s not an issue.”
“Wise choice.”
“As for church—we don’t go. And doctors? I think she’s had her fill of those for a while.” After a painful pause, she adds, “I’m grateful for what you’re doing, Grace.”
I force myself to say, “You’re welcome,” although being the source of Gretchen’s gratitude is a bitter pill.
“Call soon. Bye.”
When my bus arrives, I wave the driver off. The walk to the office will do me and Oscar good.
***
A few steps north of Broward Boulevard, the glass-and-steel skyscrapers give way to low-slung concrete-block buildings that once housed thriving businesses, now abandoned, their paint faded by decades of neglect, their purpose forgotten to time. Next, Florida pine cottages, once home to children who played outside without fear of death and parents who believed in Sunday best for church and hope for the future, are now crack dens tagged with gang graffiti. Lot for Sale signs dot the landscape in the shadow of dilapidated billboards touting the Community Redevelopment Association, an organization that failed despite millions in government funding. I count five churches in less than a mile, all denominated by some variation of the words Prophet, God, and Ascension, not one of which applies to the surrounding blight. Two young men, bodies propped up in the doorway of a liquor store, flick cigarette butts at a stand of dead palms, trees planted for “curb appeal.” The decay of the neighborhood is suffocating.
Turning left onto Sistrunk Boulevard, I hear steps behind me and pick up my pace. After a couple of blocks, I turn around. Only a tree branch blowing in the wind.
And there it is—#1301 Sistrunk, wedged between Booker’s Bail Bonds and Ivory’s Soul Kitchen, a run-down two-story building as much in need of a face-lift as I am a tan. Manny bought the place as an investment at the height of the excitement about revitalization which, in the end, was nothing but another unfulfilled dream.
I uncurl my hand and stare at the key. I’ve been it gripping so hard it’s made an impression on my palm.
“Surprise!” Jake and Vinnie, Miranda in tow, jump out from the doorway.
I double over, trying to recover the breath they scared out of me. “Sweet Jesus!”
Smiling like kids on Christmas morning, they point up at a banner over the door: The Law Offices of Grace K. Locke, Esq.
I pull them into a group hug. “You two about gave me a freakin’ coronary.”
Vinnie holds up a toolbox. “We thought you might need some help getting this place ship shape.”
I stare at the banner and choke back tears.
“Why are we all standing out here like dopes? Let’s check this place out.” Jake sweeps his arm wide for me to enter. “Welcome, Attorney Grace K. Locke 2.0.”
I slide the key into the rusty lock and turn, but the door doesn’t open.
Vinnie stiffens. “That piece of…” he mumbles under his breath, his aborted statement a reflection of my paranoia.
I give it another go, this time pulling up on the handle. The door creaks open. I hold my breath and fumble around for the light switch, anxious my credit card payment to Florida Power & Light was declined, but the light comes on, revealing three pieces of furniture—a steel desk and two chairs, one of which is missing a leg.
“Now look at that,” Vinnie says. “A chair to match you and your dog.”
Miranda’s perks up at the word “dog.”
“Don’t say that about her. You’ll give her a complex. She thinks she’s perfectly normal.”
“She must have inherited that delusion from you,” Jake says.
“Everyone’s a comedian.” I drop my briefcase on the desk and pan around the room. “It’s not much, but it’s a start.”
“Nothing a little TLC can’t fix,” Jake says, dragging in a box of cleaning supplies.
“You guys, you don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do,” Vinnie says with a finality I wouldn’t dare question. “This and a whole lot more. Without you, I’d be swabbing the decks at Starke, waiting to die. Not here helping you clean this rat trap.” Tears start to wet the old man’s eyes. “Let’s quit jawin’ and get to work.”
“First, let’s take a tour.” I slot my arm through Vinnie’s and motion Miranda to follow me into the back room. “And this here is the kitchen complete with chipped enamel sink and…”
Vinnie casts a sideways glance at the adjoining toilet with no door and coughs. “We’ll need to fix that eyesore first. Can’t be makin’ coffee in the same place where you…Well, you know what I mean.”
We climb a rickety wooden staircase to the second floor which is empty except for cobwebs the size of hammocks.
“Hey, can you give me a hand?”
Downstairs, we find Jake hauling in two chairs, a coffee maker, and a microwave from the bed of his truck. “Housewarming gifts from the staff of the Star,” he says with a flourish, like a game show host.
“You have a staff?”
“Hey, you met Moose.”
“Thanks, Jake. Totally not necessary, but much appreciated.”
For the rest of the afternoon, our little merry band scrubs, mops, and dusts, cleaning away years of neglect. We position the desk against the back wall, facing the storefront window which has also been relieved of decades of grime. Jake even manufactures a makeshift bathroom door with a blue tarp, the type used to cover damaged roofs after hurricanes. It’s the most joyous afternoon I’ve spent in a long time, the perennial knot in my gut replaced by what might be hope.
“How about we go back to The H
urricane and I’ll put some food on the grill?”
I drag one of the chairs behind the desk. “Thanks Vin, but I think I’ll spend some time getting settled in.”
“Just us boys then, Jakey. Let’s go. I’m hungry after all this slave labor.”
***
After they’re gone, I venture out with Miranda to survey my new neighborhood. As twilight descends, junkies huddle in doorways of abandoned buildings, grubby coats pulled around their wasted bodies, like nightcrawlers waiting in the shadows for nightfall to troll for their next fix. A group of young men crowds around a milk crate playing cards and talking trash. A mother drags a toddler away from a blind man who’s weaving hats out of banana leaves when he tries to stick one of his creations on her head. Like I said, it’s not much, but it’s a start. And it’s all mine.
We’ve only been gone thirty minutes, but by the time we get back, at least a dozen handbills have been wedged in the door jamb, offering everything from tarot card readings to silicone shots to plump up your butt. I unlock the four deadbolts Jake insisted on installing. Miranda bounds inside and settles herself in a dog bed Vinnie left by the front door. I pull the snub nose Smith & Wesson from my jacket pocket and put it in the top drawer of the desk. Firepower beats locks every day of the week. And so does a huge canine with sharp incisors.
I connect to Ivory Soul Kitchen’s guest Wi-Fi network, log onto the Broward County Property Appraiser’s website, and type in the address for the Florida Center for Pain, and scroll down to the sections labeled Property Owner and Mailing Address. I repeat the process in the counties for each of the FCP clinics and find the property owner and mailing address to be identical for all five locations listed on the flyer: Doloris Holdings, Inc., 1001 Federal Road, Suite 310, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301. I Google the address and find it’s a UPS Store. Doloris Holdings looks to be a shell company, but one set up by someone with a maudlin sense of humor, Doloris being the Latin word for pain. Six years of prep-school Latin did not go for naught.
I search for Doloris Holdings on the Florida Department of Corporations site—incorporated in 2005, same Federal Highway address and owner.
I rub my eyes to make sure I’m not hallucinating.
“Holy roller! Gretchen owns the FCP pain clinics!” I yell, causing Miranda to leap from her post by the door and race to my side.
“No way! The FCP clinics are owned by Gretchen?”
Right there in black and white—Doloris Holdings’ most recent annual report lists only one officer, its president, Gretchen Post. Post, Gretchen’s maiden name. At least one good thing came of cyberstalking Gretchen back when I was trying to figure out who Manny was sleeping with.
I slump back in my chair, hands on my head. “But what, if anything, does Gretchen have to do with Sinclair, other than the fact that Zoe goes to St. Paul’s?”
Miranda sits back on her haunches, eyes fixed on me.
“Maybe it’s just a coincidence that Sinclair was arrested at one of Gretchen’s clinics, the same place I saw Serena? Or are they all connected? And what would that matter? There’s still the proverbial smoking gun and then the fact that Zoe had a crush on Sinclair, who was sleeping with Serena, and…”
I glance down at Miranda, her gaze so earnest, as if what I’m saying is of the utmost importance to the future of mankind.
“Gretchen owning FCP doesn’t change a thing, does it? It makes her a shady lady, but it doesn’t mean Zoe didn’t kill Sinclair.”
A low growl.
“I hear you. I don’t think she did either.”
“Aghhh!” I get up to switch off the overhead light, which sounds like a dying fly. “More damn questions than answers at every turn.”
I sit back behind the desk and pull the chain on the green banker’s desk lamp, a law school graduation gift from my father which Vinnie nabbed from my home office and brought over.
“I need to get some blinds for that thing,” I mumble, feeling exposed in face of the window which spans the entire front of the building.
Outside, the dregs of daylight are fading and it’s raining, making my ghetto look less ghetto, softening its rapier-sharp edges as in a moody black-and-white photograph from an earlier time, one where men in trench coats waited under lamp posts, faces obscured by fedoras.
A fire engine siren pierces my reverie, sound waves attenuating as it vanishes into the night on its way to someone’s misfortune.
I pace around, trying on a few theories for size. Why had Sinclair been able to escape charges twice? If he was dealing dope, maybe something he said or did got him killed—like flipping? But for two agencies? Nobody gets that lucky. Sonny’s a by-the-book cop, and Marcus Jackson is a true believer in making people pay for their mistakes and pay even more for their bad decisions. They wouldn’t let Sinclair walk for no reason.
And then there’s Reilly. He’s one who would trample the truth for a conviction in a high-profile case like Zoe’s, but he wasn’t Sonny’s partner back when Sinclair was arrested. He was fighting his own battles, trying to stay out of prison for lying about Vinnie.
And the damn gun. Could someone have planted it? But how? And why?
After endless arranging and rearranging of the chess pieces, I’m still stumped. No way Twietmeyer will give me more time to investigate. Not unless I have a damn good excuse. But where can I find one of those?
Marcus made it clear—he’s said all he’s going to say.
Fortunately, however, I still remember Sonny’s number by heart.
Chapter 26
I leave Miranda with her godfather, Vinnie, and walk the mile to Primanti’s Pizzeria.
I choose a sidewalk table and watch as a woman in a spangly mini dress lets herself be pulled into the embrace of a twenty-something man wearing a half-tucked shirt and the kind of spark for a smile that says he’s sure he’ll get lucky later. No doubt he looks better to her now than he will in the vicious light of day, but she doesn’t care. Now is now and tomorrow, well, tomorrow is not now.
A jolt of jealousy courses through me. Was I ever so carefree? So sure that no matter what dubious choices I made, no matter how many times I tempted fate, everything would be fine? Truth is, I was, and it nearly killed me.
At the thought junction of “I am sure I never was so carefree,” and “I wish I were now,” a “Hey, pretty lady,” brings me back to why I’m here.
Sonny.
He rests both palms on the table and leans in. “Sorry I couldn’t get off earlier. Total nightmare shift. One dead guy and two home invasions.”
“That’s what I call job security.”
“And since when do you look on the bright side?”
I grab a grease-stained trifold menu from under the shaker of hot peppers and hand it to him along with a twenty. “I’m buying.”
“You know I can’t be taking gifts.” He hands back the cash. “But there’s no rule against me buying you a slice.”
“Veggie, please.”
He wrinkles his nose.
“Can I assume the usual sausage for you?” I say. “You’re nothing if not a creature of habit, Sonny.”
“Much like you’re nothing if not a smart ass.”
“Ha ha. You do know how they make sausage, don’t you?”
“Jesus, all that clean living’s turning you into the food police.”
Pizza in hand, we cross to the beach and sit on the sea wall, the ocean furling out before us, a black silk sheet embroidered with dancing white lace.
“Nice night,” I say to stall, while I figure out how to ask for his help. He doesn’t owe me anything, except maybe a tongue lashing for how I treated him. But he’s too nice for that.
“You didn’t ask me here to talk about the weather, Grace,” he says between bites.
I wipe my mouth with a crinkly paper napkin. “Am I that transparent? I must have lost my touch.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
After inhaling a few more bites, he stops chewing. “I heard what happen
ed at the bail hearing. You got ambushed. The ASA didn’t need to pile on about the gun.”
“Forget it. And come on. It’s a freakin’ smoking gun! I’d have done the same thing in Hightower’s shoes. But…” I bat my eyelids.
“But, what? I should have known there was a catch to meeting you.”
“But maybe you could do me a teeny-weeny favor.”
He gives me an I-told-you-so grin.
“I get it. You guys believe you got the right person, but if you would clear one thing up for me?”
“Believe? We know we got the right person, and I gave you everything we have, early even, before you had a right to it.”
“But not everything.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Sinclair. You arrested him some time back.”
Sonny stops chewing. “What does that have to do with anything? The guy’s six feet under, his record’s irrelevant. He’s the victim here.”
“Thing is, Sinclair didn’t have a record, so I was hoping you could tell me why. Cops like you don’t ditch a solid case unless your fingernails are being pulled out one by one.”
“Cops like me? What does that mean?”
“By-the-book cops. Cops who want more than anything to put bad guys away, but not if it means breaking the rules.”
“You think my job is to do yours now, too? I want that client of yours behind bars where she belongs, no matter how much you flatter me. You’re killing me here, Grace.”
I raise my hands in surrender. “Look, I don’t want to miss anything. That’s all.”
Sonny nods as he chews. “We all have jobs to do. That’s what makes the system work.”
“Yeah, as if it does.”
“Shoe on the other foot now, is it?”
I slap myself on the side of the head. “If I hear that one more time I’m going to scream.”
“Settle down. You chose to do what you’re doing.”
I look away, his eyes following mine to a couple, hand in hand, strolling along the breakwater, the tide licking at their bare feet. “I need this case, Sonny. If I do a good job and lose in the end, I’m good with that. But I need to turn over every stone, which is how I ended up getting the arrest report for Sinclair. Your report.”