by Paul Levine
“Kip, come in. Get out of the heat.”
He walked inside almost shyly, and she gently hugged him. “Are you okay? I’ve been so worried about you.”
“I’m fine. Just bumps and bruises.” He handed her the package. “This is for Uncle Jake. I was saving it for his birthday, but . . .”
“His birthday is in December. What’s going on, Kip?”
“I’ve got a safe place to stay. I’ll let you know when I get there.”
“What does that mean? Please, Kip. Wait for Jake. He’ll be here soon.”
“I don’t have time. I’ve got a plane to catch.”
“Where are you going?”
“Look, I’m sorry Melissa. Tell Uncle Jake not to worry. He’s shook, but everything’s cool. Really.”
“No, it’s not. Don’t cut us out of your life. Not now.”
She tried to make eye contact, but he was staring at the top of his sneakers. “Gotta go,” he said.
“We love you. Kip . . .”
He headed out the door, and she followed him. The man standing by the Escalade opened the rear door, and Kip hesitated a moment. Melissa caught up and saw that his eyes were moist. “Tell Jake . . .” he started to say.
“Tell him what?”
He got into the back seat and, tears welling, spoke three sentences before the man in the suit closed the door. She memorized every word, as well as his tone and inflection, so she would get everything right when she told the man she loved.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Three Simple Sentences
When I walked into the kitchen, Melissa was squeezing limes into a tumbler with two ice cubes. She wore white linen slacks and a black silk blouse and was barefoot. I took off my lawyer’s suit coat and removed my tie, which had lately begun to feel like a noose.
Usually, when I get home, I have a pint of Grolsch, the Dutch beer in the green bottle with the white porcelain stopper. Tonight, Melissa accurately guessed that I needed something stronger. She poured two jiggers of Grey Goose into the tumbler with a splash of club soda.
I leaned over to kiss her, and Melissa said, “Kip was here.”
“What! When?”
“About an hour ago. I tried calling your cell, but it went straight to voice mail.”
“Shit. I was at Kip’s apartment, getting woke by two Gen Z idiots. Tell me everything from the moment Kip got here till he left.”
I collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs. Physical and mental exhaustion. Feeling the beginning of a migraine, a sharper pain than the dull sledgehammer of the daily headache, I took a long, limey sip of the drink.
“He knocked on the door and I let him in. A black Escalade was parked in the driveway with a man at the wheel who didn’t turn off the engine, either knowing Kip would be quick or to keep the A/C on, or both.” Melissa pushed a few strands of hair off her forehead. “Another man, wearing a suit and tie and aviator sunglasses, stood outside the passenger door. I’d say about forty. Good haircut. I couldn’t see the man behind the wheel very well.”
“Government plates?” I asked.
“Georgia license plate with one of those big peaches in the center.”
“That’s odd. Why Georgia?” I didn’t expect an answer. I was just thinking out loud.
“It was a rental,” Melissa said. “I saw the Hertz sticker on the rear bumper when they pulled out.”
Melissa was not only a great medical diagnostician, she would have made a highly credible witness in a murder trial.
“So, the two are from out of town and rented a pricey Escalade, probably at the airport. What else?”
“Kip brought this.” From the counter, she retrieved a gift-wrapped package the size of a shirt box. “He said it’s for you.”
“As best you recall, what were his exact words?”
She thought a moment, while outside the neighborhood male peacock was hooting. It’s an odd mating call, faking a sexual sound to attract a female peacock. When she approaches, the male rushes her and . . . well, mates. Despite spending most of my life unattached and haunting every after-hours joint in NFL cities, including Buffalo, I have never done this. The bull rush, I mean. The hooting I might have tried once or twice.
“He said, ‘This is for Uncle Jake. I was saving it for his birthday, but . . .’ He broke it off there.”
“Like maybe he’s not gonna be around in December, so here it is now,” I guessed, hating the sound of it. My temples were pounding with pain.
I unwrapped a gold ribbon and tore open the plain brown wrapping paper, then lifted the lid off the cardboard box. Under two layers of decorative paper was a lightweight sweater, size XXL, in a rust color. I ran two fingers across the fabric. Softer than cashmere, maybe softer than a cloud.
Melissa looked at the label. “It’s a Loro Piana. One hundred per cent vicuña.”
My blank look told her to continue. “The softest, most expensive wool in the world. Comes from an animal that roams the Andes Mountains. Looks a bit like a llama.”
“You’re saying there’s a llama look-alike shivering in the Andes so a guy in Miami can have a nice sweater. Guess I won’t wear it to the gym.”
“For around five thousand bucks, I think not.”
“What! Is that true?”
My mature migraine was now having baby migraines, and my vision blurred.
“Five grand, more or less,” she said. “It’s what Axe wears on the show.”
“Axe?”
She gave me a sympathetic look reserved for the clueless. “Bobby Axelrod. On ‘Billions.’ If you wouldn’t fall asleep after dinner on Sunday nights, you’d know.”
I thought of the twins and their grotesquely expensive sneakers. And now this, a lightweight sweater that was, admittedly, handsome but, likewise, obscenely priced.
I remembered Niles’s taunting voice: “Yo, Gramps. You don’t know shit about Kip, do you?”
Kip had adopted the values of other people. Not the Lassiters, one generation removed from hard-drinking, hardscrabble, bar-brawling, hand-to-mouth fishermen and trailer trash.
“Mel, do you think Kip’s sticking it to me?” I asked.
“How do you mean?”
Outside, the male peacock hooted louder. A female was likely within striking distance, and he was probably saying, “You come to the Grove often?”
“What’s Kip’s message to me?” I asked. “My last gift to him was only a T-shirt, remember? And in return he gives me a five-thousand-dollar sweater.”
“You spent four days designing the T-shirt, and he loved it.”
I pulled up the memory. When Kip was accepted at Penn with a full ride, tuition-free, I was ecstatic. So were my pals who congratulated Kip for following his uncle’s path to Penn State. Not being Phi Beta Kappas, they couldn’t keep it straight. I played football and graduated, cum NO laude, at the sports powerhouse in Happy Valley. Kip was headed to the Ivy League university in Philadelphia.
“Penn. Not Penn State!” Kip yelled at my clueless friends.
It soon became a running joke, so I designed a T-shirt with pictures of Benjamin Franklin and Joe Paterno side by side with the seals of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State. Beneath the artwork was the slogan:
Penn. NOT Penn State.
We both wore the shirts and passed them out to family friends.
I polished off the vodka and said, “What else did Kip say?”
The wind had come up, and palm fronds slapped the kitchen window. A late afternoon thunderstorm was brewing.
“He said he had a plane to catch but wouldn’t say where he was going. You shouldn’t worry. He’s got a safe place to stay.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Please let me finish.”
“I’m sorry, Mel. Keep going.”
“I walked him out to the Escalade, and he got teary-eyed. We stood there a little awkwardly. Then he said, ‘Tell Uncle Jake thanks for everything.’”
Oh, shit. I know “goodbye” w
hen I hear it.
I forced myself to concentrate, even though several Abrams tanks were doing figure eights inside my skull, occasionally firing rounds of blindingly hot white phosphorus. “Anything else?”
“I’m getting there. Just as he was getting into the back seat, he said something I made a mental note to remember. Three simple sentences.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“He said, ‘Tell Uncle Jake I’m sorry I didn’t drink the Blizzard. I love Blizzards. Always have and always will.”
Aw, jeez.
“You understand what he’s saying, don’t you, Jake?”
I didn’t answer, so she kept going. “You were right yesterday, and I was wrong. Kip’s rejecting the Blizzard was really about you. But listen to what he just said. A complete turnaround. He loves you and always will. You get that, right?”
I would have said “Yes” if I hadn’t been sobbing.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Storm Warning
The wind howled and the sky turned angry shades of smoky gray. I paced on the back porch as Melissa sat in an Adirondack chair with her laptop balanced on her knees. She was working and I was griping. I needed to know just where that plane Kip had to catch was taking him. Wherever it was, I would follow.
“I don’t know his friends,” I said. “I don’t know who to call, where to go, how to find him. He could be flying to Grand Cayman—or any of those other cities I didn’t know about. Or, if he’s on the run, someplace new entirely.”
I had given Melissa the dates of Kip’s flights that had been reimbursed by Q.E.D. and she was at work on the Internet.
“The trips to Kansas City, Houston, and Los Angeles line up with either SAT or ACT exams in the last year,” she said, looking up from her laptop. “This week, there are no tests in those cities or anywhere else for that matter. So, that leaves Santa Barbara and Grand Cayman.”
I stopped pacing as distant lightning backlit the clouds over the Everglades to the west. “Let’s find out by process of elimination.”
I called information on my cell phone, then let the mechanized operator connect me. It was three hours earlier on the West Coast.
“Quest Educational Development,” said a pleasant female voice.
“This is Mr. Harris. Could you connect me with Dr. Ringle?”
“Mr. Harris?” It seemed to be a question.
“Yes, Franco Harris. From Pittsburgh.” I heard a keyboard clacking.
“Will Dr. Ringle know what this is in reference to?”
“Signing up my kids for some first-rate tutoring. Money’s no object.”
“Dr. Ringle is in conference and should be free in about an hour.”
“What about Mr. Lassiter? Is he there?”
“He’s not expected until tomorrow. May I take a number?”
I hung up.
California, here we come.
“I’m gonna be on the first flight tomorrow,” I said.
My cell rang with the invigorating notes of the Penn State fight song. “This is Franco Harris,” I said, expecting the Q.E.D. receptionist to apologize for our getting cut off.
“In your dreams,” Ray Pincher said. “Franco glided when he ran. You looked like you were stomping grapes.”
The clouds had turned as black as a funeral shroud, but the lightning was still so far away, I couldn’t hear the thunder.
“What’s up, Ray?”
“We need to talk, pal. I’m in your neighborhood. At my daughter’s house.”
“Gables Estates isn’t my neighborhood. I’m in the South Grove with bohemians and aging hippies.”
“Close enough. C’mon over.” I could hear him exhale, could practically smell the pungent aroma of a Cohiba. “P-Three’s been asking about you, Jake.”
“P-Three” being Pincher’s name for his daughter ever since she married Barry Popkin and became Paulette Pincher-Popkin. Actually, Doctor Paulette Pincher-Popkin, a respected OB-GYN.
“Tell me what’s up,” I said.
A thunderclap rattled the windows. Still no rain, but the storm blew closer.
“A county crew pulled your nephew’s Tesla out of that canal,” Pincher explained. “A couple of FBI agents showed up and processed the scene.”
I felt a shiver of icy fear run through me. “Tell me there wasn’t anything inside the car other than murky water and a couple snook.”
“Plastic bag with twenty-five grand in hundred-dollar bills. The Tesla has a dent streaked with blue paint on the driver’s side. Easy conclusion is that a blue car sideswiped your nephew’s vehicle, sent it into the drink.”
“The FBI agents told you this?”
“Aw, they wouldn’t tell me I had toilet paper stuck on my shoe. Foyo talked to the tow truck driver. What do you think, Jake, a drug deal gone bad?”
“I wish.”
“Why the hell would you?”
“I know how to defend a drug case.”
“What then?” At this point, I expected the worst.
“I’ll tell you when I see you. Ten minutes.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Variance
I rounded the LeJeune Circle and headed down Old Cutler Road under a canopy of banyan trees, two green parrots circling overhead. Matching my mood, the skies to the west looked like the apocalypse, clouds billowing steely gray with black puffs like bursts of anti-aircraft fire.
Ray Pincher’s daughter Paulette and son-in-law Barry Popkin lived in a mansion on Casuarina Concourse in the gated community of Gables Estates. Barry was a banker, real estate developer, and condo builder who could be credited, or blamed, for much of the Brickell Avenue canyon I had visited earlier today. He was also chairman of the Orange Bowl Committee, a board member of nearly every charity in town, and known for his philanthropy. Popkin’s generosity extended to his father-in-law’s reelection campaigns, to the point where Pincher’s war chest scared off serious challengers.
The house sat on a full acre with 100 feet of waterfront, which was a good thing, because the yacht tied to the dock was 90 feet long. The house had a full-size pub with a bar imported from London and a giant wine cellar, which, of course, was not in a cellar, as the house was barely above sea level. I’d first been here for Paulette’s wedding, a lavish affair in which Barry Popkin—a white, Jewish New Yorker—wore a red and gold silk dashiki and a matching knit kufi cap, instead of a yarmulke. Paulette was lovely in a traditional floor-length white wedding gown. Her father was dressed, as usual, in Brooks Brothers and complained loudly about the reception food, which included both latkes and chitlins, and the thunderous Jamaican steel band, whose drums could probably be heard in Jamaica.
“I blame Michael Jordan for making it cool to be black,” Pincher told me that day.
The double wrought iron gates, wide enough for a herd of elephants, were open, so I eased the Eldo into a driveway of pink and gray granite pavers and parked adjacent to a regulation-size basketball court. As I approached the court, a skinny teenager with the unlikely name of Moses Pincher-Popkin took a jump shot twelve feet from the hoop.
Clang. Off the back of the rim.
A tall, muscular African American man wearing University of Miami shorts and a muscle-tee rebounded and snapped a pass directly at Moses’s chest. If he hadn’t bobbled the ball, Moses could have leapt and fired in one smooth motion. But nothing was smooth about Moses’s moves.
No clang of the rim, as this shot was an air ball, tickling the bottom of the net. The rebounder snagged it with one hand and whipped it back to Moses. He caught the ball cleanly but didn’t leave his feet. Taking three seconds to line up his shot, he squinted and fired. The ball hit the backboard and banked in.
“Attaboy, Moses!” the rebounder encouraged him. “Keep that elbow under the ball.”
Moses was Ray Pincher’s grandson, Paulette and Barry’s boy. If I remembered correctly—and these days, who knows—Moses was between his junior and senior years of high school. The kid was scrawny, 5' 10? and maybe a buck-forty, w
ith olive skin and vaguely African American features.
I opened a gate and walked onto the court. “Hey Moses, do you remember me?”
He shot me a wide smile that had none of the guile or mischief of his grandfather. “You’re Wrong-Way Lassiter, grandpop’s friend.”
Oh, thanks a lot, Ray. Score one time for the wrong team, and I have to carry that name my whole life.
“Thanks for reminding me, Moses.” I nodded hello to the man. “You’re Dominique Barkley. I saw you play for the Heat.”
“Long time ago. Nice to meet you.”
“You never scored a bucket for the wrong team, did you?”
He laughed. “I’m an assistant coach at U.M. now. Mr. Popkin hires me as a shooting coach for Moses.”
I didn’t ask how that was going, and Dominique didn’t offer his opinion.
“I’m trying to make varsity,” Moses said.
“Ransom Everglades?” I asked, figuring the ritzy place was not only close but prestigious.
“No way. Dad doesn’t believe in private schools, even though he went to Andover and Harvard. I’m at Palmetto. He says if it was good enough for Jeff Bezos, it’s good enough for me.”
“Much tougher competition to make the team.” I shot a look at Dominique Barkley, and he nodded. I didn’t say what I was thinking.
Kid, your dad might have named you after Moses Malone, and you might be half African American, but you’re gonna get eaten alive in tryouts by kids who play on asphalt courts with chain-link nets.
“One-on-one, Jake? Game of twenty-one?”
The voice came from behind me. Approaching was Ray Pincher, monogrammed sleeves rolled up on his custom-made shirt, Italian silk tie at half-mast.
“Or a quick game of HORSE,” I said. “Fifty bucks a letter, like the old days.”