Beyond Suspicion

17

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In the morning Jack went jogging. He pushed it farther than his normal run, following the tree-lined path along Old Cutler Road all the way to Coco Plum, an exclusive waterfront community. The leafy canopy of century-old banyans extended from one side of the road to the other, a tunnel Miami-style. Salty smells of the bay rode in on a gentle east wind. Traffic was sparse, but by the morning rush hour a seemingly endless stream of BMWs, Jaguars, and Mercedes-Benz convertibles would connect this wealthy suburb to the office towers in downtown Miami. Certain American-made SUVs were acceptable in this neighborhood, but only if they were big enough to fill two parking spaces at The Shops of Bal Harbour and were used primarily to drive the future Prada-totin’, Gucci-lovin’ generation to and from private schools.

Jack was approaching the four-mile mark of his run and feeling the pull of a restless night. He and Cindy had gone back to bed around three A.M. Their talk had put his worries about Jessie and his letter to the state attorney on the back burner, but Jack’s thoughts of his mother were percolating to the surface.

The only thing he knew for certain about his mother was that he’d never known her. Everything else had come secondhand from his father and, much later in his life, Abuela. Jack’s mother was born Ana Maria Fuentes in Havana and grew up in Bejucal, a nearby town. She left Cuba as a teenager in 1961, under a program called Pedro Pan (Spanish for “Peter Pan”), a humanitarian effort that was started by an Irish Catholic priest and that enabled thousands of anxious Cuban parents to spirit away their children to America after Castro took over. Ana Maria was eventually linked up with an uncle in Tampa, and Abuela had every intention of joining them just as soon as she had the chance. Unfortunately, that chance didn’t come for almost forty years, when Abuela was finally able to get a visa to visit her dying brother. For Ana Maria, that meant making a new life for herself without her mother. She worked menial jobs to learn English, and moved to Miami, where she met Harry Swyteck, a handsome young college student who happened to be home on summer break. From the old photographs Jack had seen, it was obvious the boy was totally smitten. Jack was born eleven months after they were married. His mother died while he was in the nursery. Doctors weren’t as quick to diagnose pre-eclampsia in the 1960s as they are today, or at least they weren’t as accountable for their screwups.

It hadn’t dawned on Jack until the homestretch of his morning jog, but maybe that was the reason he’d jumped into Jessie’s case.

He wondered what his mother would think now, her son duped by a respected doctor and a woman who’d only pretended to be misdiagnosed. He knew too little about her to hazard a guess. His father had remarried before Jack was out of diapers. Agnes, Jack’s stepmother, was a good woman with a weakness for gin martinis and an irrational hatred for a woman she feared Jack’s father would never stop loving-his first wife, Jack’s mother. She went ballistic each time a letter from Abuela arrived from Cuba, and many of them Jack never saw, thanks to her. “Dysfunctional” was the politically correct label that experts might have placed on the Swyteck family. Jack tended to think of it as a royal freak show. But he could still laugh about some things. He was a half-Cuban boy raised in a completely Anglo home with virtually no link to Cuban culture. That alone guaranteed him a lifelong parade of comedic moments. People formed certain impressions about the Anglo Jack, only to do a complete one-eighty upon hearing that he was half-Hispanic. Take his Spanish, for example. Jack was proud of his heritage, but it was with some reluctance that he shared his Cuban roots with anyone impressed by the way this presumed gringo named Swyteck could speak Spanish. It was a conversation he’d had at least a thousand times:

“Wow, Jack, your Spanish is really good.”

“My mother was Cuban.”

“Wow, Jack, your Spanish really sucks.”

It was all how you looked at it.

Jack finished the run and showered long before his normal breakfast hour. The commute from his mother-in-law’s house was a little farther than his usual drive, but he still arrived before his secretary. Jack stood outside the double-door entrance, fumbling for the master key, as the elevator opened behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, then did a double take.

“Good morning,” said Dr. Marsh.

Jack turned but didn’t answer. He hadn’t seen the doctor since the last elevator ride, when he and Jessie had held hands. Marsh came forward but didn’t offer Jack his hand.

“I said good morning, Mr. Swyteck.”

“Oh, it’s you, Dr. Marsh. I didn’t recognize you without your girlfriend.”

“I thought we should talk.”

Jack gave him a quick once-over and said, “Come in.”

He opened the door and flipped on the lights. Dr. Marsh followed him through the small reception area to the main conference room. They sat on opposite sides of the smoked-glass table top.

The doctor was a handsome man who tried way too hard to look younger. Flecks of gray added distinction to his black hair, but it was coated with a thick styling gel that reflected badly in the light. Beneath his seven-hundred-dollar Armani jacket he wore a Miami Heat T-shirt that was given away at last year’s NBA playoffs. It was a look that a twenty-nine-year-old tech-stock millionaire on South Beach might get away with, but not a doctor who’d reached the age where he was lucky to still have all of his hair. Purely on a physical level, he didn’t strike Jack at all as Jessie’s type. For one, Jessie had hated beards, even well-groomed ones. At least that was what she’d told Jack when he’d let his stubble grow for a week while they were still dating. Maybe she’d just hated them on Jack. Or maybe Jack didn’t have a clue as to her likes and dislikes.

Jack said, “Before we start, it should be made clear that you’re not here as a client or prospective client. Anything we talk about here is not protected by the attorney-client privilege.”

“That’s fine. I’m confident you won’t be repeating this conversation to anyone anyway.” He pulled a package of cigarettes from his inside pocket. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Yes.”

He smiled a little, as if he liked Jack’s combative edge, then put away the cigarettes. “I hear you’ve been talking to the state attorney’s office.”

“That’s true.”

“What are you telling them?”

“The truth.”

The doctor paused, as if he needed a moment to recall what was “the truth.” It lasted just long enough to let Jack take control of the conversation. “Who told you I was talking to the state attorney?” asked Jack.

“A detective came to see me last night. Him and an assistant state attorney.”

“Benno Jancowitz?”

“Name’s not important.”

“What did you talk about?”

“They told me you’d given them a written statement.”

“That’s between me and them,” said Jack.

“Don’t try to get all legal on me. I know what it says. They read it to me.”

“Good. Get used to hearing it. It’ll be public information by the end of today.”

“Don’t you want to know why they read it to me?”

“To give you a chance to confirm or deny your role in the scam, I presume.”

“You presume wrong.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. They wanted me to confirm that you were part of it.”

“I wasn’t part of it,” Jack said, without much as blinking.

Dr. Marsh leaned into the table, not quite as smoothly as he might have, as if he’d overrehearsed the cherished line he was about to deliver. “Trust me, Mr. Swyteck. If there was a scam, you were part of it.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m appealing to your sense of reason. We’re both smart men, but nobody’s perfect. Shit, till I saw what that woman could do with a zucchini squash, I was never one to eat my veggies. Jessie Merrill was one tasty dish.”

“She was just another client.”

“Yeah, and Anna Kournikova is just another tennis player. My point is this. You and I both made mistakes with the same woman. You got a little more crazy than I did, but you’re a criminal defense lawyer, so you know people who do that kind of stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Fixing things. You know, getting rid of problems like Jessie Merrill.”

“Are you saying-are you accusing me of having hired someone to kill her?”

“The detective told me you were in court the day Jessie died. Ironclad alibi. How else could you have done it?”

“That’s the whole point. I didn’t do anything.”

“I heard about you and that friend of yours who went to visit my wife. You know who I’m talking about: Theo Knight, former death-row inmate.”

“Theo is not a murderer. And neither am I.”

“Come on. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you had her whacked. Nobody’s saying we have to like each other, but we have to be together on this. I can help you on the back end. You just gotta help me on the front end.”

“What front end?”

“That’s my boy. ‘What front end?’ I like that. Lost your memory already, have you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The front end-the scam. There was none, right?”

“No, not right.”

“Careful there. With that murder for hire, the back end’s the much uglier rap.”

Jack felt the sudden urge to kick his teeth in. “Get out of my office.”

“You need me.”

“Get out.”

“If you say there’s a scam, I say you’re part of it. If you’re in on the front end, you’re in way deep on the back end.”

“You have ten seconds to be outta here.”

He stayed put, defiant, but a nervous stroke of his beard told Jack that he was cracking. Finally, he rose, and Jack showed him to the lobby. They stopped at the double glass doors that led to the elevators.

“You sure you won’t play ball?” said Marsh.

“Get out before I bat your head across the room.”

“Lay a hand on me, counselor, and I’ll sue you for assault.”

“I’ll look forward to it. No better place than a courtroom to beat your ass.”

“Yeah,” he said with a smirk. “Just like the last time.”

“It won’t be like the last time.”

“Got that right,” he said as his expression ran cold. “I won’t have to worry about Jessie fucking things up.”

He pushed open the door and left. Jack watched through the beveled-glass window as the doctor entered the open elevator and checked his handsome facade in the chrome finish.

The doors closed, and for the first time since Jessie’s death Jack was really beginning to wonder: Just who was the brain behind the scam?