by Mandy Miller
“Where’d you get— Never mind.”
“Sinclair tried to sell you Oxy at FCP.”
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Police business is just that, police business. Not Counselor Locke’s business.”
“Come on, what I found is public record. Or was. Until it somehow disappeared.”
He glances over his shoulder.
“Are you that afraid of Reilly? Afraid he followed you here.”
He stiffens. “Hell, no. I’m not afraid. I don’t like going behind his back is all. He’s a good partner. Much as you want to deny it, the Vicanti fiasco changed him.”
I grunt and inhale the last of my pizza as he stares at me, unblinking.
“People make mistakes and some of them deserve second chances. And some even get them. The trick is to not fuck up the second chances. And I’d advise you to try not to do the same. Second chances don’t come along twice.”
“Thanks for the advice, Detective. But I’d still like to know why you or your partner didn’t clue me in on the fact that Sinclair was arrested at FCP, or at least mention it in the reports on Zoe Slim’s case.”
“Like I said, it’s irrelevant. We’ve got your girl dead to rights.”
“Maybe, but it might have been nice to know that the victim was a dealer. And why’d you single out Sinclair? There’s a line of dealers outside FCP as long as my list of debts waiting to deal their stash.”
He drops his head to his chest. “Jesus, you’re a pit bull.”
“Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Okay, but you didn’t hear this from me. I collared Sinclair at FCP. People were selling their prescriptions. Then one guy OD’d in his car in the parking lot. That reporter, what’s her name? Sharon Posner. She shot video of a bunch of drug deals out in the open, in FCP’s parking lot.”
“And?”
“And the chief put the heat on us to make some arrests over there, to get the media and the public off his back. Sinclair just happened to be one of the lucky ones. Tried to sell me thirty-five Oxy. All on tape. Legit bust. End of story.”
“That’s a lot of dope, enough to put him away for a long time. So, what did Sinclair agree to do for you to avoid having a record?”
“He sang like a canary at the station. Scared out of his mind he’d lose his job. He fingered a few mid-level guys and one high-level dealer we put away for twenty-five to life, and the State dropped his case. Period. End of story.”
“But then the canary ends up with two holes in his body, one in his head and one where his prick used to be. Don’t you think it might raise questions about who it was who might have wanted him dead not named Zoe Slim? Did you check out other higher-ups in Sinclair’s network? They would’ve had a good reason to want him dead if they found out he was cooperating.”
“No need.” He clasps his hands behind his head. “We have the murder weapon. Bullets in the body matching the gun. And fingerprints. Your client’s fingerprints. And to wrap it all in a neat package, we’ve got the threatening texts. Why would we even think about crawling down another rat hole?”
“Zoe’s the obvious choice. No need to look at anyone else. Kind of sloppy police work, don’t you think? Especially since you had to know your confidential informant Mr. Sinclair got himself arrested again during the time he was working for you, working off his bad behavior to keep it on the down low.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “What? No. That’s not true.”
“Oh yes, it is.”
“If he was arrested again, it wasn’t us.”
“If? I assure you there’s no ifs about this. Same facts, different pill mill. Ring any bells?”
A definitive shake of the head. “No way. What agency?”
“And, as luck would have it, while I was doing my field research, I happened to bump into,” I pause, “wait for it…Serena Price.”
“The girl who found the body?”
“One and the same. Thing is, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why a key witness against my client, the same person who found the dead guy, is a customer at the same place you arrested the victim. Now what are the chances?”
“Coincidence, I guess.”
I crack my knuckles. “You know what coincidences mean to me, Sonny?”
“No, I don’t. What do they mean to you, Grace?”
“Coincidences are explanations used by liars. They mean the real story, the truth, is a lot more complicated.”
“Shit, Sinclair could’ve been Pablo Escobar and Serena his right-hand man, and it wouldn’t matter for shit for your client. Do the best job you can for Zoe Slim and move on. Sometimes you can win more by losing. Her case has already boosted your profile. You’ll hook some other sleazeball clients with deep pockets on the heels of this one. Besides, when your guilty client goes down, you’ll be able to sleep at night. You won’t have to worry about walking a murderer.”
I stand and face him. “Maybe, but what keeps me up nights are the ones who didn’t do it.”
“Come on, you think she’s innocent? Don’t let the pressure mess with your head.” He points at me. “And most of all, don’t let the kid play you.”
I look up at the full moon, a ghostly cloud drifting over its face. “I’ll try not to.”
He reaches out a hand and, gently, strokes the tattoo on the top half of my left arm. “Between the service and the job, I’ve seen a lot of tattoos, but never another one like yours. Me, I got your standard eagle when I was in the Navy.”
He hops over the sea wall onto the sidewalk. “I’ll be seeing you in court, Counselor.”
“That’s one thing we can both count on,” I say, but my words are drowned out by the waves crashing onshore.
Walking home, I stroke my tattoo, my mind drifting across the chrystalline waters to Stiltsville. The place I want to be buried. At sea. At peace. I wanted there to be no doubt.
Chapter 27
Vinnie’s customary knock. Four times: three hard, one soft. “Mail call. Open up.”
The sight of the large envelope causes my heart drops faster than an anchor in calm seas.
“The FedEx guy left this for you.”
I stare at the envelope as if it’s radioactive.
“Go on. Take it, would ya? I’m busy here.” Vinnie digs deep in his pocket for a doggie treat. Without being asked, Miranda gives him a paw, takes the treat like a delicate treasure, and crunches it into rubble.
I grab the envelope and drop it on the futon.
“I take it you know what’s in there.”
“Final divorce papers.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Endings are never easy, sweetheart. Maybe think of it as a new beginning.”
I wipe my nose on the back of my hand. “It’s just…” I drop onto the futon and rub the fading tan line where my wedding ring used to be. “Who am I now, Vin?”
“You are still you. And stronger than ever. And if it makes you feel any better, I was married and divorced three times, and not one day do I want any of them back.”
I let out a snotty laugh. “You sure it wasn’t the other way around?”
“Always with the smart mouth. Like I said, you’re still you, Gracie.”
He looks deep into my eyes, his own flinty. “You’re better off without that cheatin’ rat bastard, kid. You’re a force of nature. You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.”
I rip open the envelope, grab a pen, and scrawl my signature on every line marked with a Sign Here sticky arrow, and stuff everything into the enclosed return envelope.
“Can you take this for me?”
“You mean keep it for you?”
“No, I mean send it for me.”
“Sure. I’ll take it to FedEx in the morning.”
“First thing, okay?”
“Sure. Anything you need.”
“Can you look after Miranda while I take a run?” I glance down at Oscar. “Or more like a hobble.”
He grabs the leash a
nd dashes out before I can say “Thanks.”
***
The beach is a black desert, the scorched tourists all back in their hotels, dining on stone crabs and key lime pie. I close my eyes and inhale, the air a cocktail of salt, magnolia, and a blanket of dense humidity. It’s the kind of air tourists spend thousands to breathe, the kind that made me fall in love with Florida.
Obscured from prying eyes by the darkness, I start to jog, the odd outward sweep of Oscar something I’m still not used to. I pass couples making out in parked cars. And a homeless woman pushing a shopping cart, searching for a safe place to sleep out of sight of predators.
Farther south, the Strip, several blocks of touristy restaurants and souvenir shops emerges, the ferocity of its garish neon in stark contrast to the night. Flashing signs promising 2-4-1 and The Biggest Margarita on the Beach. A tattoo parlor called Pink’s Inks wedged between a frozen daiquiri bar and a psychic offering readings for five dollars, three for ten. On the corner of Las Olas, the Elbo Room is humming along as it has since World War II, the overflowing crowd corralled by a rope line monitored by off-duty cops. Beers in hand for locals, weak umbrella drinks for tourists, all sway along to the strains of the ubiquitous Jimmy Buffet wannabe playing the unofficial state song, “Margaritaville.”
From the top of the Las Olas bridge, I look west, to my destination, Idlewyld, a finger of coral rock lined with mansions. Perhaps I’m doing this to feel pain, to feel something other than regret, but I tell myself it’s to close the book on my old life once and for all.
I wail into the night like a banshee. “Face up! You need to get on with your life, soldier!”
The four-story contemporary looks more like a modern art museum than a home. I’d wanted contemporary, Manny, Mediterranean. We flipped a coin and I won. And while the money came pouring in from his real-estate-development business to build the house and fill it with designer furnishings, more than we’d ever imagined as broke students, the kids never arrived to sleep in its many bedrooms.
I stand in the shadow of the huge banyan tree and take a deep breath, the scent of night jasmine filling my lungs. It’s been less than a year, but it feels like much longer since I was last here. I lean my face against the stainless-steel railing atop a half wall, like a kid at the zoo, and take inventory. The sun-bleached Florida pine bench by the front door. The banana palm I planted is still there too. The foliage in the courtyard is neatly manicured, although Manny loathes anything to do with the garden. Clearly, he’s hired a new gardener, one to replace the one he fired because he saw the guy spying on me out by the pool.
I recognize the outline of my Jaguar under a tarp in the driveway, alongside Manny’s black Mercedes S Class, its high polish reflecting the sharp, geometric lines of the house.
A light goes on in the master suite upstairs and I crouch out of sight.
Manny stands in the window, staring into the night. He’s wearing the robe I gave him on our last Christmas together, a few weeks before I was arrested. Crimson silk with his initials AAM, Armando Alonso Martinez, monogrammed on the breast pocket. After a couple of minutes, he recedes into the bedroom. I’m about to stand when he reappears, scanning the street.
A chill blooms inside me, my sweat-soaked running clothes stuck to my body. I need to get moving. As I jog away, crickets accompany my retreat, chirping their night music. I forgot about the crickets. I am enchanted by the sound, until a white Bentley convertible rolls to a stop in front of the house, a halo of blonde hair in the driver’s seat.
***
The 11 p.m. NA meeting at St. Anthony’s is always a macabre circus, but I need to go. For the Bar, yes, but more for me. The late hour brings out the most broken, the most bold in their denial, the ones who cannot help but tempt fate. I cross the parking lot, drawn by the light streaming from Fellowship Hall. Two police cruisers are parked outside the entrance, driver’s side to driver’s side, the cops busy shooting the breeze in plain view of two drug deals and one couple screwing against the dumpster.
A hand yanks me by the arm as I am about to step inside. I turn, right arm ready to put my attacker in a choke hold, but the person backs away and raises both hands.
“Stop, Grace. It’s me.”
I squint into the darkness. The voice is familiar, but the person isn’t. It is Hachi. But not the Hachi I know—the strong Hachi, my sponsor, my friend, the one who held me together when everyone else, including me, was tired of trying to save me. No, this is another Hachi. This Hachi is destroyed. Eyes bloodshot, hair a bird’s nest. Her skin a dusty gray, cheeks sunken. She may be forty calendar years old, but in addict age she looks double that.
“Jesus H,” I say, grabbing her and pulling her away from the entrance. No matter how loaded, how done, how stupid you are outside NA, inside you need to follow the script. No drugs and no drama inside.
“What happened?” I say, frantic at the thought that she’s flushed eight years of sobriety down the drain.
She buries her face in hands that haven’t seen soap in ages. “I messed up,” she groans, her whole body quaking like a withering leaf in the wind.
I open my arms and she dissolves into my embrace. A good six inches taller than her five-feet-four, I lower my head on top of hers, my long black hair cascading over her raggedy, brown braids, shielding her face.
“What did you take” I ask, afraid.
“Smack. Can’t afford the pills no more.”
Exactly what I was afraid of—heroin, the last stop on the addict’s highway to hell.
I shudder. “But you’re here, aren’t you?”
“I can’t do this again. Can’t start all over.” I try to lead her inside, but she yanks her hand away. “I just can’t.”
I wipe her face using my shirt tail and smooth her hair back from her face.
“I look like shit,” she whimpers.
“You kinda do, but this isn’t a fashion show. Let’s just go on in.”
She turns her back and starts to walk away. “No, I can’t. I won’t.”
I grab her arm. “Yes, you can. You think I’m going to believe you came over here not to get help? Let me help you this time.”
She drops her head to her chest. “I can’t.”
“I’d have had to come looking for you. Find you in some gutter with a needle in your arm. That’s what you would have done if you’d really given up.”
She raises her head and sniffles, eyes so puffy they appear glued shut. “Guess I’m not real good at giving up either.”
“You and me both,” I say, taking her by the hand and leading her to an empty row of seats in the back of the hall. “But failing at giving up isn’t so bad, is it?”
She rests her head on my shoulder. “Damn, woman. Did anyone tell you you’re a pain in the ass?”
“What do you think?”
The slightest of smiles to crawls its way onto her lips, but soon fades when a woman in a waitress’s uniform starts to share how her three-year-old son drowned in the bathtub because she went to the corner to buy crack.
I clamp my eyes shut against the brutal image and squeeze Hachi’s hand hard, as if the pressure will save her from seeing the drowned child.
Hachi stands to leave. “I can’t. I’m not strong enough.”
“Yes, you are,” I say pulling her down by the sleeve. “You’re going to do what I’m going to do, and what we’re going to keep doing. We’re going to keep coming back here, keep saying the words. For as long as it takes.”
“What words?” she asks, words slurred.
“The words we need to say every day, my friend. My name is Grace, my name is Hachi, and we are addicts.”
***
The second he hears the squeaky gate, Vinnie explodes from the office, arms waving. “Get in here. You gotta see this!”
“I’m exhausted. I’m going to bed.”
“Trust me, sweetheart. You need is to get in here.”
I peek around the door, the tiny, dark office illuminated by the
light from an ancient TV.
I point at the rabbit ears. “You might wrap those suckers in foil to get a better picture. Or maybe even buy a new TV?”
Vinnie drags me in front of the grainy screen.
A news ticker crawls across the bottom of the screen. “Body of young woman found on Fort Lauderdale beach.”
“They’ve been replaying this non-stop on all the channels,” he says.
A shot of the beach. The scene a jumble of swings, ropes, monkey bars, and two people drifting by on floating mattresses in the background.
“That’s the playground on the beach at Del Mar Way,” I say. “That’s the one the city had to close the sides of with two-by-fours because a homeless family was living under there. But one of the boards has been pried off.”
“That’s where they found the girl’s body.”
An image of Detective Reilly limboing under crime scene tape.
I lean in close to the screen. “Holy shit! That’s Reilly.”
Another plain clothes officer.
“Wait. That’s Sonny. I just saw him a couple of hours ago.”
Reilly and Sonny standing beside a body covered by a white sheet next to Dr. Owen, the county medical examiner.
“He never said anything—”
“Keep watching, will ya?”
The screen reverts back to a live shot from the newsroom.
“We have breaking news. The body found late this afternoon on Fort Lauderdale beach has been identified as that of Serena Price, eighteen, a resident of the Rio Vista neighborhood. Ms. Price had been shot twice. Once in the head at point blank range and once,” the newscaster clears his throat, “and once in the groin. Ms. Price was to be a key witness at the trial of prep schooler Zoe Slim for the murder of a much beloved guidance counselor at St. Paul’s Prep, Brandon Sinclair. The weapon used to kill Ms. Price has been recovered from Ms. Slim’s bedroom at her home. Prints lifted from the gun have been identified as those of Zoe Slim, currently out on bail for the murder of Brandon Sinclair, a counselor at St. Paul’s Prep. Ms. Slim was taken into custody this evening.”
Chapter 28
The guard leaps to his feet and salutes.