Blood Money

Chapter Seven

It was nine P.M., and Theo was working both sides of the big U-shaped bar. Even on a Sunday evening, Cy’s Place oozed that certain vibe of a jazz-loving crowd. Creaky wood floors, redbrick walls, and high ceilings were the perfect bones for Theo’s club in the heart of Miami’s Coconut Grove. Art nouveau chandeliers cast just the right mood lighting. Crowded cafe tables fronted a small stage for live music.

Cy’s Place was special in Jack’s book. It was the club Theo had always dreamed of owning, and on these very barstools, at the grand opening, sparks had begun to fly for Jack and FBI agent Andie Henning. They’d talked and laughed till two A.M., listening to Theo’s uncle Cy give them a taste of Miami’s old Overtown Village through his saxophone. A few months later, on the second anniversary of Jack’s thirty-ninth birthday, Jack had put a ring on her finger. More than a few pages had flipped on the calendar since then, and still no date for the wedding.

But that was another story.

“Nacho?” asked Theo as he set a heaping plateful on the bar in front of Jack.

“Thanks, man.”

Jack was starving. Since “not guilty,” he’d been paying the sole practitioner’s price for a monthlong trial and countless missed deadlines. He’d caught a few hours of sleep after dropping Sydney at the airport and then headed to the office. Not until he smelled the nachos under his nose did he realize that he’d forgotten to eat since breakfast. He was snagging a fourth chip before Theo could get one.

“Dude, you took the Bacon nacho,” said Theo.

“There’s no bacon on these nachos.”

“Not bacon, Bacon. It’s the nacho that can’t be touched without stealing the cheese from all the other nachos, the nacho that-in a weird, culinary, six-degrees-of-separation way-connects to every other nacho on the plate. The Kevin Bacon nacho.”

“Sor-ree,” Jack said as he put it back.

“You can’t put it back!”

“What do you want me to do?” Jack asked, strands of gooey cheese hanging over the edges of his chip.

A thirsty customer at the other end of the bar signaled for two beers. Theo stepped away to serve him, carrying on loud enough for Jack to hear him say, “Can you believe that skinny piglet over there took my Bacon nacho?”

Jack’s phone chimed with a text message. It was from the other half of the Sydney Bennett defense team. Name of Sydney look-alike is Celeste Laramore, Hannah’s text read.

The victim’s identity had been withheld since the attack. Jack texted back: How do you know?

Turn on F Corso. Dunno how she always gets it first.

The thought of more Shot Mom was enough to bring up his Bacon nacho, but he reached over the bar, grabbed the remote, and tuned to BNN. It was a split screen, with Faith Corso in the studio talking to a BNN reporter who was standing outside the lighted entrance to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. Cy’s Place was too noisy for Jack to hear, but the closed captioning sufficed. In fact, seeing the printed white letters scrawl against the black banner gave the word even greater impact.

COMA.

It felt like a punch in the chest. Suddenly, the closed captioning was garbling every other word. Jack reclaimed the remote and raised the volume. The TV was annoying to the couple seated next to him at the bar, but the TV was competing with crowd noise and music, and the report was wrapping up, so he begged their pardon and cranked it up.

Corso asked, “Is the young woman showing any signs of alertness?”

“Not to my knowledge,” the reporter said. “As I said at the top of the report, this is late-breaking news. We are told that Celeste Laramore’s parents arrived from out of town early this morning, but virtually no information had been released about the young woman’s condition until just a few moments ago.”

“What a horrible, horrible thing for those parents,” said Corso. “Tell me this: Do we have any further information on who might have done this?”

“Faith, that is an equally startling part of this development. After BNN broke the news that she is, in fact, in a coma, I immediately followed up with contacts at Miami-Dade Police. While no one in the department is speaking on or off the record about a possible suspect in this attack, sources who would talk to BNN only on the condition of anonymity did provide a shocking insight into how Celeste Laramore ended up outside the women’s detention center last night dressed like Sydney Bennett.”

“Let me stop you there,” said Corso, “and remind viewers that I spoke exclusively with Celeste’s roommate on the air last night; she told me they had been at a Sydney Bennett look-alike contest on Miami Beach.”

“Well, that story may be unraveling,” said the reporter.

“What do you mean?”

The gleam in the journalist’s eye gave Jack cause for concern. The reporter continued:

“BNN has learned that the defense team for Sydney Bennett may have actually hired Celeste as a decoy to distract the crowd. The plan, sources tell us, was for Sydney Bennett to slip away unnoticed while the media and the crowd focused their attention on the look-alike.”

On screen, Faith Corso’s mouth was agape. Jack nearly fell off his barstool.

Corso continued in a tone dripping with contempt: “That is the most cowardly and despicable ploy I have ever heard. The very idea of putting a college student in a situation like that just so Shot Mom could slip away off-camera and hop on an airplane to Fiji or Cancun or wherever she’s hiding and sipping pina coladas while her lawyer hawks her book-well, that is just criminal in my mind.”

“Yes, I would say that Sydney Bennett’s lawyers will be facing some very tough questions in the coming day or two.”

Corso broke for a commercial. Jack lowered the volume and apologized again to the couple seated next to him for the news intrusion. Seconds later his phone vibrated with an incoming call. He checked the number. It was the FBI-in a manner of speaking. It was Andie. The BNN reporter had been absolutely right: Sydney’s lawyer would be facing some tough questions.

Jack stepped away from the bar and took his fiancee’s call in the relative quiet of the back hallway that led to the restrooms.

“Hey, love. What’s up?”

“I just got off the phone with Ben Laramore. He called here at the house.”

“Laramore? I presume that would be. .”

“Celeste Laramore’s father. His daughter is at Jackson in a coma.”

Jack collected himself, feeling for the family. “What does he want?”

“To talk to you. Man to man.”

“When?”

“Tonight. He wants you to come to the hospital.”

Jack sighed. “I guess I owe him that much.”

“You’re not going. This case is out of control. For all you know, the poor man is so distraught that he wants to shoot you dead.”

“If that’s what he wants, he’ll find me sooner or later. It’s important to meet with him and tell him face-to-face that this story about hiring his daughter to be a decoy is nonsense.”

“How do you know it’s nonsense?”

“Because I didn’t do it.”

“How do you know someone else didn’t? Like her parents, her brother, some old boyfriend?”

That guy who met Sydney at the airport.

Jack let a woman pass on her way to the restroom, then continued. “I need to tell Ben Laramore that I didn’t do it. And I want to assure him that if somebody on my team was involved, I’ll get to the bottom of it. That’s the right thing to do.”

“Fine. Then I’m coming with you.”

“What?”

“Trust me. He’ll respect you more if you show up with an FBI agent. Especially if she’s your fiancee. And armed.”

Jack could have pointed out that he’d done just fine as a lawyer for fifteen years without FBI protection, but he didn’t argue.

“I’ll pick you up in ten minutes,” she said, then ended the call.