Hear No Evil

55

Jack slept until nine-thirty the next morning.

The previous night, Theo had brought over a broad selection of wheat beers that he was debating whether to stock at Sparky’s, figuring that a lost trial was the perfect occasion for Jack to sample all fourteen brands. It didn’t seem all that funny now, but at about two A.M. it had busted Jack’s gut to watch a lug like Theo turn into Truman Capote as he read aloud from the artsy-fartsy sales literature for each of the different German brews.

“Ayinger BraüWeisse,” he’d said. Then he took a little sip, smacking his lips at hummingbird speed. “Fruity, yet herbaceous.”

Jack slowly lifted his head from the pillow. The great thing about wheat beer was that it never gave you a hangover. Another one of Theo’s lies. It seemed to take forever, but finally Jack managed to sit upright on the edge of the bed. Then a friggin’ trumpet blasted in his ear, but it was only his telephone. He snatched it up before it could ring a second time. It was Theo, jovial as ever, showing absolutely no signs of overindulgence. The man was the devil.

“Hey, Jack. Have you seen this morning’s paper?”

“Only if it was printed on the inside of my eyelids.”

“Here, let me read it to you.”

Jack groaned. It was another of Theo’s quirks. Perhaps it was because he’d never been read to as a child, or maybe he was a closet television newscaster, but for some reason Theo enjoyed reading aloud, with feeling-and with incredible volume. Far more volume than Jack’s beer-soaked brain could handle. He held the phone about a foot away from his ear and listened.

Theo cleared his throat, mumbled through the introductory sentences, then skipped to the good part. “Says here, quote, ‘Reportedly, Ms. Hart’s conviction has been no small source of anxiety for her alleged lover, U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant Damont Johnson. Sources tell the Tribune that Lieutenant Johnson’s biggest fear is that Ms. Hart, now convicted of murder, will break her silence and reveal the truth about her husband’s shooting, which may well implicate Johnson. These same sources confirm that Lieutenant Johnson is in a race to beat her to the punch. In a telephone interview late last night, however, U.S. attorney Hector Torres would neither confirm nor deny that he is having any discussions with Lieutenant Johnson, and he declined to comment on whether the government is willing to cut a deal in exchange for the lieutenant’s tell-all testimony.’ ”

Jack’s head was pounding, but it wasn’t the wheat beer. “Does it say who the source is?”

“No. One of those anonymous jobs. You want me to visit Johnson, try to find out?”

“No. Stay out of it.”

“I don’t really get the point of this, anyway,” said Theo. “Lindsey’s already convicted. Why would the prosecutor want to deal for Johnson’s testimony now?”

“We’ve still got a sentencing hearing. Torres wants a needle in her arm, and I’m trying to keep her alive.”

“So Johnson is going to flip again and say it wasn’t the kid who done it after all?”

“I don’t know. This is just an article in a newspaper, with anonymous sources to boot. Who knows what’s really going on? Could be true, or it could be someone with his own agenda who lied to an overeager reporter for his own purposes.”

“Or this he could be a she.”

“Yeah. Or that.”

“Whatchya gonna do?”

Jack massaged his temples, trying to stop the throbbing. “Go straight to my only source. I’ll talk to Lindsey.”

Lindsey’s pallor was as lifeless as the cold beige walls of the detention center. She looked the way Jack felt, and she hadn’t been the one drinking all night. Her elbows were on the table, her head was in the palms of her hands. The newspaper article was spread out in front of her. They were alone, behind a locked door in a windowless room that was reserved for attorney-client communications.

“Who’s the source for the article?” asked Lindsey.

“Don’t know,” said Jack.

“Who do you think it is?”

“No idea. I was listening to Cuban radio on the way over here. They think it’s Castro.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m not kidding.”

She got up from her chair and stepped away from the table. She began to pace slowly, just a few steps in each direction, as the room was small. “You think it could be true? You think Johnson is dealing with the U.S. attorney?”

“I phoned Hector Torres on the way over here. He wouldn’t take my call.”

“Then it must be true,” she said, her voice quickening. “They’re talking.”

“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion.”

“You don’t know Damont. Deep down, he’s a survivor.”

“Survivor or not, he has a long way to go to earn the trust of a federal prosecutor.”

“Torres is a slimeball. He won’t care how slippery Johnson seems, as long as he wiggles in his direction.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Jack. “If Johnson is going to be of any use at all to the prosecution, he has to say that you shot your husband. Problem is, he’s already testified under oath that he was in your house that morning and that your son confessed to the crime. Those are hardly reconcilable.”

She stopped pacing and looked Jack in the eye. “They’re completely reconcilable.”

Jack was taken aback by her glare. “How do you mean?”

“Brian confessed to the crime because…”

“Because why?”

“Because he thought he was covering for me.”

Jack’s pulse quickened. “Was he?”

She drew a breath and turned away

Jack said, “Was Brian covering for his mother, Lindsey?”

She still didn’t answer, wouldn’t look at him.

Jack’s voice took on an edge. “I want the truth this time, damnit. No more lies. You tell me the truth, and maybe I can work something out with Torres. You keep on lying, I guarantee you’ll die by lethal injection.”

She turned and faced him, her eyes glistening with tears. “Brian didn’t kill Oscar. But neither did I.”

“Then what did happen?”

She drew a breath, collecting herself. “Most of what you heard about Oscar was true. He was an awful man, awful to me, awful to Brian. We fought a lot, and Brian was the one who suffered. The thing with the headphones and Brian’s loss of hearing-that’s all true.”

“Is that where the truth ends? Everything else you told the jury was a lie?”

“No. Not by a long shot. The sex. Oscar and Johnson and me. I was telling the truth about that, too. He gave me a club drug or something. That’s how it all got started.”

“It wasn’t something you wanted to do?”

“No. Not at all.” She paused, then added, “Not at first.”

Jack nearly had to shake his head, make sure he’d heard that right. “What do you mean, ‘not at first’?”

She was suddenly less misty, more defensive. “What do you think it means, Jack? It means I didn’t like it at first, but my feelings changed over time.”

“So what are you saying? You were abused and fell into some low self-esteem psychological-”

“I’m not making any bullshit Stockholm syndrome excuses, Jack. My feelings never changed about the three-way stuff. My feelings toward Damont-that’s what changed.”

“You liked having sex with him?”

“It went beyond that. I liked him.”

“How did Oscar feel about that?”

“Ask the fertility doctor, the government’s expert. He told the jury all about Oscar’s assassin sperm count, his jealousy over my infidelity. What the doctor didn’t realize was that Oscar wasn’t jealous in the normal sense. He just didn’t like it that Damont and I started to do it on our own terms.”

“It was something Oscar could no longer control. Was that it?”

She shook her head and chuckled, but it was mirthless. “The only time Oscar was ever happy was when he had everything and everybody under control. He got his rocks off watching Damont and me go at it. He scored points with his daddy by getting all Coast Guard routing information from Damont and feeding it to Brothers for Freedom. And I was the pornographic quid pro quo he used to pay back his buddy Damont for all that secret information.”

“And then things fell apart,” said Jack.

“Of course. But Damont is the one who came up with the solution, not me.”

“You two had a plan?”

She nodded slowly. “I went to work at the hospital that morning, and I called Damont, just like he told the jury I did. But I wasn’t trying to lure him over to the house and set him up for a murder that had already gone down. It was all just part of the plan. I told him, ‘Go on over, Damont. Door’s unlocked. Brian’s asleep for another forty-five minutes. Oscar’s asleep in the bedroom. Do what you gotta do.’ ”

Jack felt numb for a second. “So Johnson went?”

“Yeah. Just like that Cuban soldier said he did.”

“Then what?”

“He went straight to the bedroom. He found Oscar’s gun right where I told him it would be. And then…”

“He shot him?”

She seemed to struggle, then said, “Yeah. He shot him.”

Jack paused. He wasn’t sure why. It just seemed like the fitting thing to do upon the mention of someone’s untimely death. “But wait a minute,” said Jack. “At some point he talked to Brian, right?”

“Right. That was when things started to go wrong. See, Damont and I didn’t think Brian would hear the gunshot. But something woke him. The vibration of footsteps on the wood floor, maybe a light going on. Whatever it was-Brian sensed that something was happening.”

“But if Brian got up and he saw Johnson standing over Oscar’s body, he would have known that Johnson shot him, right?”

“Except that he didn’t see Johnson. Damont heard Brian’s bedroom door open before Brian stepped into the hallway. Damont hid in the closet. All Brian saw when he came in the bedroom was Oscar all bloody and lying on the bed.”

“Is that when Brian called you at work?”

“Yes. And then he went back in his room, too scared to come out until I got there.”

“What did Johnson do?”

“When he heard Brian’s door close, he came out of the closet and ran out of the house. But then, this is where he finally got clever. He waited a minute or two, then walked back in the house and went straight to Brian’s room. He was acting all excited, told Brian that I had called him and asked him to come over, that something had happened to Oscar. Poor Brian, he just freaked. He didn’t know what to do. He got all flustered and figured that I had shot Oscar. He knew how much Oscar and I had been fighting; he knew how abusive Oscar was. He knew if I’d done it, that Oscar had deserved it.”

“So Brian told Johnson-”

“Right,” said Lindsey. “Brian said he had done it. I guess he figured a ten-year-old boy wouldn’t go to jail. But his mommy would. He thought he was protecting me.” She was leaning against the wall, as if exhausted, her eyes cast downward. “That’s the truth, Jack. That’s the way it really happened. Damont and I weren’t sure which one of us might eventually get charged. But we agreed up front, if either of us was, we wouldn’t point the finger at the other. If push came to shove…”

“You’d blame it on Brian.”

She folded her arms tightly, withdrawing a bit, as if Jack had hit below the belt by saying it aloud.

Jack said, “That was all just a dance that you and Johnson did in the courtroom. His accusing Brian, your breaking down and saying it was all a lie. Nice touch, Lindsey. All the more believable if the mother stands up and defends her son.”

“I’m not proud of that,” she said.

Jack looked off to the middle distance. He could have gone through the entire alphabet, A to Z, listing the things she shouldn’t have been proud of. But he wasn’t here to lecture. He was here to keep her off death row. “What brought it all to a head, anyway?” said Jack. “How did Johnson finally decide that it was time for Oscar to go?”

She seemed relieved to have another question, anything to release her from the painful silence of self-reflection. She forced a little smile and said, “Ah, now that’s where the story gets very Miami.”