Blood Money

Chapter Fifteen

Jack reached Cy’s Place in time to catch the 7:10 P.M. start of the Marlins’ game on TV. Theo wanted to hear all about his meeting with Rene. Jack gave him next to nothing, sharing instead nearly everything else he’d done since. An hour wasted at the courthouse on a calendar call. Another hour driving Abuela to a friend’s house for the night so she wouldn’t be alone. A useless follow-up with Detective Rivera, who was still without leads on Jack’s attacker. A phone call to Andie.

“Andie who?” said Theo.

“Very funny,” said Jack.

The conversation seemed to stick on Andie, mostly Jack’s doing, which prompted Theo to render more pithy advice on “temporary” versus “permanent”-pop psychology on the order of Charlie Brown, Lucy, and “THE DOCTOR IS IN.” A lonely customer a couple of stools away overheard and joined in.

“I know the feeling,” he said as he loosened his tie. He had out-of-towner written all over him, a businessman who had wandered over from one of the Grove hotels. “Just got divorced myself.”

Jack nodded but said nothing, wanting no part of that conversation. Theo overrode him.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Theo. “What’s your story, pal?”

He leaned closer, resting one elbow on the bar, as if he were about to divulge the secret formula for Coca-Cola. “My wife called me a wimp.”

Jack blinked, not quite comprehending. “You divorced your wife for that?”

“No. She divorced me. And you know why?”

Jack had an inkling, but it was Theo who said what they were both thinking.

“Because you are a wimp?”

“No,” he said, smiling awkwardly, not sure it was a joke. “I had knee surgery. Torn ACL. Hurt like you wouldn’t believe. Did I get even one minute of sympathy from my wife? Hell, no. All I ever heard from her was that I don’t know what pain is because I’ve never had a baby.”

“She has a point,” said Jack.

“No, you’re both wrong. Just because I’ve never felt that kind of pain doesn’t mean I’m not in pain. That’s like saying I’ve never had the pleasure of sex because I’ve never had sex with a porn star.”

“You told her that?”

“Damn right.”

“So, lemme get this straight: You made a point about pain that disrespects women by drawing an analogy to sex that totally disrespects women. Is that basically the picture?”

The man fell silent, searching for a response. Finding none, he slapped a ten-dollar bill on the bar and walked away, muttering something to the effect of, “Everybody takes that bitch’s side.”

Theo cleared away the empty beer glass. “I was wrong.”

“About what?”

“What I said at your house this morning. About you being single. You’re sounding more married all the time.”

“You agree with that guy?”

“I’m just saying.”

Theo brought him a fresh bowl of mixed nuts. Jack cherry-picked the cashews and the almonds while watching the Marlins load the bases but fail to score in the bottom of the first inning. His cell rang during the commercial break, and he practically fell off his stool as he reached for it, hoping it was Andie. It wasn’t.

“Guess who.”

He recognized Sydney’s voice in an instant. Jack closed out the bar noise with a finger to his ear. “Where are you?”

“None of your business.”

The threat from his attacker was still fresh in Jack’s brain: Tell me where Sydney is or. .

“Actually, it is my business.”

“Jack, I need help, and I can’t talk long, so please just listen to me.”

The reception was poor, and the bar noise didn’t help. Jack hurried to the exit and found a quiet spot on the sidewalk beside a five-foot-tall fiberglass peacock. The extra few seconds was time enough for him to think better of responding to her jab in kind. “All right, I’m listening,” he said.

“I need to know if you really are the lawyer for the Laramore family.”

“They asked me to represent them. I haven’t made a decision yet.”

“Faith Corso said you’re planning to sue BNN. Is that true?”

“If I agree to be their lawyer, that decision will be between the Laramore family and me.”

“You are going to sue BNN, aren’t you?”

“Sydney, even if I end up not taking their case, my conversations with the Laramores are still privileged. I can’t talk about this.”

There was a brief silence, but Jack suspected that Mount Sydney was on the verge of eruption. Her response was at least an octave above shrill: “How could you do this to me?”

“It’s not about you, Sydney.”

“Yes, it is! It’s me who people turn on their TVs to watch, not you. I’m the one people talk about. I even had an agent pick me up in his airplane.”

“Right. And how did that work out for you?”

“It’s been hell, okay? Complete hell. I’m done with him.”

“What a shock.”

“Stop treating me like I’m some kind of joke. The fact is, we were this close to a seven-figure deal with Cornerstone Publishers.”

“Sydney, every agent in America is on the verge of a million-dollar deal.”

“This is real, damn it. But you are making it almost impossible for me to hold this thing together.”

“Me?” he said, scoffing.

“Connect the dots, Jack. Cornerstone is owned by BNN. Without an agent, what do you think my chances are of salvaging this deal if my lawyer hauls off and sues BNN? It will blow up everything. You are going to kill my deal!”

“That’s really not my concern.”

“I deserve this, Jack. Don’t take this away from me!”

Jack’s personal experience with spoiled brats in general was limited, and the fact that some attacker had nearly choked him to death demanding to know Sydney’s whereabouts didn’t make it any easier to handle this one. “Is this really why you called, Sydney? To whine about your million-dollar book deal?”

“This is important!”

“It’s more important for me to know where you are.”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Then we have nothing more to talk about.”

“No, please!”

“When you’re willing to tell me where you are, we can talk.”

“You’re not listening to me!”

“Good luck with your book.”

“Good luck?” she said. “I don’t even have an agent. What am I supposed to do now, huh? What am I supposed to do, Jack?”

“Grow up,” he said, ending the call.

There was a pit in Jack’s stomach. Part of it was the possibility, however remote, that some publisher actually would pay a million dollars to keep the Shot Mom express rolling along. More troubling, however, was the realization that he probably needed Sydney’s cooperation if the police were going to find the sick puppy whose idea of a proper introduction was to grab people by the throat and send them to the ER.

Jack started back into Cy’s Place, then stopped. The meeting with Rene was just a few hours old, and Jack hadn’t made a decision one way or the other about the Laramores; in fact, he had promised himself that he would sleep on it. But if what Rene had told him was true, if the meddling of an overzealous BNN reporter had kept Celeste from getting the immediate medical treatment she’d needed, the case might actually be winnable.

Every Goliath had its David.

The feeling inside him continued to grow. “Winnable” might be pushing it. But the case could have serious settlement value. And the overly altruistic notion that he was the world’s pro bono clinic needed to stop. He was a sole practitioner, not Mother Teresa, and he was engaged to marry a woman who was even more underpaid than Jack Swyteck, P.A. He would just have to work out a modified fee arrangement that was fair to him and the Laramores. It might actually make up for the financial hit he took defending Sydney Bennett.

To say that Sydney’s call had pushed him off the fence might have been overstatement. But there was definitely something to be said for helping people who wanted to be helped, who didn’t go out of their way to prove that they were beyond help. It was one of those moments when he wished his old friend Neil were still alive, when he would have liked to pick up the phone say, “Neil, we got a job to do.” His daughter Hannah wasn’t a bad second choice. Jack still had her number on speed dial from Sydney’s trial. She answered with a cheery “hello” on the second ring.

“Hannah, hey. Can you meet me at the institute in an hour?”

“Sure. What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”

That was one of the corny expressions she’d inherited from her father, which brought a little smile to Jack’s face.

“Partner, you and I got a complaint to draft.”