Blood Money

Chapter Ten

Jack wanted to blow his brains out, which, generally speaking, is a predictable reaction to defending a client for seven hours in a deposition taken by the newest member of the Florida Bar.

At five o’clock he grabbed a cab back to the office to catch up on other work, hopefully something that would remind him why he had become a lawyer in the first place. Monday-evening traffic was even worse than usual, and it could have pushed him over the edge, had he let it get to him. Instead, he savored a random “Miami moment,” finding amusement in the company name on the stalled landscaping truck that was blocking the road: Jesus amp; Sons. Jack wondered if the proprietor had ever read The Da Vinci Code.

Bonnie was still at the reception desk when Jack stepped through the door.

“Phone calls stopped yet?” Jack asked.

“What does this tell you?” she asked, then pressed the button on the air horn. It peeped, as spent and exhausted as she was.

“Maybe we should just stop answering the phone for the next day or so.”

Bonnie reached all the way down to her New Jersey roots and shot him some attitude. “Brilliant, Jack. And if that doesn’t work, we can put up the hurricane shutters, fly out to Vegas, and see if we win enough money to pay next month’s rent. You can’t run a law office that way. And if I ignore the landline, they’ll call your cell.”

Jack removed his tie and laid it aside. “That’s already started. It was vibrating all day in the deposition from hell. Not sure how these people got my cell number.”

“From the Web site.”

“The BNN Web site?” asked Jack.

“Not directly,” she said, “but it’s kind of linked to it-‘no-blood-money.com.’”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Take a look.”

Jack watched over her shoulder as Bonnie brought up the site on her screen. He was of course aware that blogging and other online chatter about the Sydney Bennett trial had been rampant. It was news to him, however, that in a matter of days the no-blood-money campaign had organized to the point of developing an official Web site.

Bonnie dragged her cursor to the About Us button. “The site manager is the same woman who started the Justice-for-Emma Web site when trial started.”

The home page was a three-paneled display. On the left was the infamous photograph that the prosecutor had shown on a projection screen during her closing argument, a candid shot of Sydney dressed in a tight halter top and belting back a shot of tequila on the night of Emma’s disappearance. On the right was a photo of Jack with links to daily coverage of the trial. The middle panel was for Latest Developments. The feature du jour was a prominent link to the BNN headline about Jack’s alleged solicitation of the Laramore family, together with “a personal message” from “special guest blogger” Faith Corso: TELL JACK SWYTECK WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT HIM. CALL TODAY! NO BLOOD MONEY! Jack’s office and cell phone numbers were in bold red letters.

A pop-up suddenly took over the screen. It looked like an advertisement for red wine.

“What the heck is that?” asked Jack.

“Monataque,” said Bonnie.

“Mona-what?”

“Mona-taque. It’s a juice they make from some exotic tropical berry. Sells for about forty dollars a bottle. It’s supposed to be good for you. Cures acne. Hemorrhoids. Cancer. You name it.”

“That’s who’s sponsoring the Web site?”

“Not directly. Monataque is one of those multilevel marketing programs.”

“You mean a pyramid scheme?”

“Not all MLMs are pyramids. I sold cosmetics for two years and actually made some money. But to your point: From what I hear, Monataque is a classic pyramid. It’s all about recruiting members at five hundred dollars a head, and ninety-nine percent of them never sell enough juice to earn it back. The husband and wife who run this Web site also happen to be one of Monataque’s top recruiting teams.”

“So the no-blood-money Web site is also a recruiting tool for snake-oil salesmen?”

“It takes all kinds, Jack. This is a grassroots movement.”

“Yeah, and grass is green. Like money. I wonder how much the kickback to Faith Corso is.”

Bonnie logged off, switched off the computer, and grabbed her purse. “I’m beat. I’ll see you in the morning, chief.”

Jack thanked her for slogging through a rough day, locked the door after her, and went back to his office. He kept more clean clothes at the office than at home, and as he changed out of his suit, the phone rang with eleven separate calls, each going to voice mail. On the twelfth, he pulled the cord from the jack.

The best therapy would have been to dive into his work and forget it, but the distractions had gotten to him, and after an hour of wasted time, he gave up. He’d managed to get through the Sydney Bennett trial without too much second-guessing, but now that the case was over, regrets were flooding in, some from the distant past. More than a decade had passed since his defense of Eddie Goss, a confessed sexual predator who stood accused of savaging a teenage girl. After the verdict, protesters had pelted him with exploding bags of animal blood on the courthouse steps-no subtlety in the blood-is-on-you symbolism. Bonnie had been there for him, pleaded with him not to resign from the Freedom Institute. But State v. Goss was the trial that had pushed Jack out of the world of defending the guilty, the most gut-wrenching, controversial case of his career.

Until this one.

Jack switched off the lights and locked up the office. It was just a few minutes past sunset, but the leafy canopy that provided shade by day made dusk seem like the dead of night. Riding his bicycle all the way back to Key Biscayne wasn’t an option, the spent air horn being the least of his concerns. It was a recurring transportation problem that Jack solved once or twice a week by walking six blocks into the Grove for a beer at Cy’s Place and catching a ride home from Theo. He shot Theo a text to let him know:

Need a ride tonight. Walking over now.

To his surprise, Theo actually responded: Watch out for the boogeyman.

It was funny, but it wasn’t.

The asphalt trail was a familiar path, and in the darkness, he was able to avoid the biggest potholes and tree roots almost from memory. This was one of the safest stretches in Coconut Grove, where churches and synagogues butted up against some of the oldest and most prestigious private schools in Florida. Hundreds of schoolchildren made this walk every day, no problem. Preschoolers, hand in hand with a parent. Teenage girls dressed in the traditional plaid uniforms of Sacred Heart Academy. Ivy League hopefuls in their new Range Rover or BMW convertible. Some even arrived by boat on the waterfront side of the lush campuses. Five days a week, a mixed parade of innocence, wealth, and privilege-all without incident.

And every last one of them was on Cape Cod or in the Hamptons during the dead of Miami’s summer, the Grove a virtual ghost town.

Stop it.

Jack kept walking, and he was about a quarter mile from Cy’s Place when he noticed the sound of footsteps behind him. They had the rhythm of his own footfalls, seeming to match his pace and direction. He stopped, looked back, and said the first thing that came to mind-something a little less paranoid than Is anyone out there?

“Theo, are you messing with me?”

Nothing.

“Theo?”

A car passed, then more silence. Uncomfortable silence. Then another car passed, and in the glow of the headlights Jack spotted the orange reflective tape on the heels of a jogger across the street. She obviously had no problem being alone on Main Highway. It gave him a sense of relief, which quickly turned into anger at himself. Main Highway. Which fed into Main Street. This wasn’t a side street or a back alley. He could almost hear Theo laughing at him as that text message replayed in his mind’s eye:

Watch out for the boogeyman.

It was essentially the same thing Neil Goderich had told him right out of law school, when Jack had joined the Freedom Institute: Threats came with the turf. Over the years, Jack had gotten plenty of them from cops, clients, witnesses, and even the creepy anonymous source. Any criminal defense lawyer who couldn’t handle a dose of intimidation needed to find a new career.

Still, as Jack reached the darkest part of the trail, he found himself walking faster. Streetlamps were of little help, their glow smothered by sprawling banyan trees on either side of the highway, the highest and longest limbs reaching across both lanes, as if to join hands. It was the lush, tropical version of a tunnel-one without lights. Jack had just passed the gated entrance to Ransom Everglades Upper School when, out of nowhere, it felt as if he’d been broadsided by an all-pro linebacker. The force sent him tumbling over the waist-high wall of coral rock that extended the full length of the trail. He landed facedown in the grass on the other side of the wall. The attacker was on him immediately.

“What the-”

Before Jack could finish his sentence, much less react, his hands were behind his back, a nylon loop closed around his wrists, and another loop joined his ankles. He was hog-tied, unable to move. The man rolled him over and grabbed Jack by the throat.

“Don’t move, just listen,” the man said.

The man’s grip was atomic, the fingers of a mountain climber, and the pressure around Jack’s neck made it difficult to focus on what he was saying. The thick, slurred speech didn’t make things any clearer.

“Where is Sydney Bennett?”

Where ish Shyndy. It wasn’t that he was drunk. He had something in his mouth-a wad of cotton or some spy toy to make his voice unrecognizable.

Jack could barely breathe, let alone talk. “I don’t know where she-”

“Don’t lie. If you lie, you die.”

Jack was having trouble following even that simple line of logic. The pressure around his neck had his head pounding and lungs burning as he struggled to breathe. Jack couldn’t see the man’s face, couldn’t see much of anything. His attacker, like everything else, was a blur.

“If you don’t know where she is, then it’s your job to find her for me.”

“I don’t-”

“Shut up!”

The grip tightened. The burning sensation in Jack’s lungs was unbearable. A hint of blood flavored his mouth, the pressure somehow having triggered it. Jack fought for air, but his attacker was in complete control.

“You are going to lead me to Sydney,” the man said, his hand like a vise around Jack’s neck, the words slurring through the wads of cotton in his mouth. “If you don’t, I promise you this: Someone you love will get what Sydney deserves.”

The hand around Jack’s throat rose higher on his neck and closed even tighter. Jack had one final burst of resistance left in his body, and then nothing more. The pounding in his head seemed to explode into his ears, and then the night went from black to blacker-to nothing.