The Pardon

Chapter 11

At eight-thirty that Saturday evening, Harry Swyteck parked his rented Buick beneath one of the countless fifty-foot palm trees that line Biscayne Boulevard, Miami’s main north-south artery. The governor was alone, as he’d promised his blackmailer. It was a few minutes past sunset, and the streetlights had just blinked on. Harry sighed at the impending darkness. As if he didn’t already have enough to worry about, now he had to carry around ten thousand dollars in cash in Miami after dark. He checked the locks on his briefcase and stepped quickly from the car, then scurried across six lanes of traffic to the east side of the boulevard, following the sidewalk into the park.

Bayfront Park was Miami’s green space between bustling city streets and the sailboats on Biscayne Bay. Granite, glass, and marble towers lit up the Miami skyline to the south and west of the park. Across the bay toward South Miami Beach the lights of Caribbean-bound cruise ships glittered like a string of floating pearls. Cool summer breezes blew off the bay from the east, carrying with them the soothing sound of rolling waves breaking against the shoreline. At the north end of the park was Bayside Marketplace, an indoor-outdoor collection of shops, restaurants, and bars, and the starting place for the horse-and-buggy rides through the park that were favored by tourists.

Tonight it was Governor Swyteck’s turn to take a carriage ride. He hoped to blend in as a tourist, which was the reason for his white sailing pants, plaid madras shirt and Marlins baseball cap. But the leather briefcase made him feel conspicuous. He bought a stuffed animal from one of the cart vendors, just to get hold of the paper shopping bag, and stuck the briefcase in the bag. Now his outfit was complete: He didn’t look at all like a governor, and that was the whole idea-though he did have a plan in case anyone recognized him. “Another stop on my grass-roots campaign trail,” he’d say, and they’d probably buy it. Four years ago he’d manned a McDonald’s drive-through, taught phonics to first-graders, and worked other one-day jobs-all just to look like a regular Joe.

“Carriage ride?” one of the drivers called out as he reached the staging area.

“Uh-I’m thinking about it,” Harry replied.

“Forty bucks for the half hour,” the driver said, but the governor wasn’t listening. He was trying to figure out which of the half dozen carriages belonged to Calvin, the man he’d been told to hire for the nine o’clock ride. By process of elimination he zoomed in on a sparkling white carriage with red velvet seats, pulled by an Appaloosa with donkey-like ears poking through an old straw hat. The governor felt nervous as he approached the wiry old black driver, but he told himself once again that he had to see this mission through. Sensing he was being watched, he looked one way, then the other, but could see nothing out of the ordinary.

“Are you Calvin?” he asked, looking up at the driver.

“Yessuh,” he replied. Calvin was in his eighties, a relic of old Miami, when the city was “My-amma” and truly part of the South. He had frosty white hair and the callous hands of a man who had worked hard all his life. He seemed exaggeratedly deferential, making Harry feel momentarily guilty for his race and the way this old codger must have been treated as a young man.

“I’d like to take a little ride,” said the governor as he handed up two twenty-dollar bills.

“Yessuh,” said Calvin as he checked his watch. “Fair warnin’ for you, though: You’re my nine o’clock ride. I always stop at the concession stand on my nine o’clock ride. Get myself an iced tea.”

“That’s fine,” said the governor as he climbed aboard. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Calvin made a clicking sound with his mouth and gave the reins a little tug. His horse pulled away from the rail and started toward the waterfront, as if on automatic pilot, while the governor looked on with amusement as the animal navigated the route. “How long you been doing this, Calvin?”

“Lot longer than you been guvnuh, suh.”

So much for anonymity.

The journey began at the towering bronze statue of Christopher Columbus and headed south along the shoreline. Palm trees and musicians playing saxophones and guitars lined the wide pedestrian walkway of white coral rock, the south Florida version of a quaint cobblestone street. Calvin played tour guide as they rolled down the walkway. He was a veritable history book on wheels when it came to the park and its past, talking about how they had filled in the bay to build it in 1924 and how the sea had tried to reclaim it in the hurricane of 1926. He spoke from memory and of practice, but he was clearly putting a little emotion into it for his distinguished guest. The governor listened politely, but he was fading in and out, to remain focused on the purpose of his trip. His anxiety heightened as the carriage curled around the spewing fountain and headed west, away from the brightly lit walkway along the water to the interior of the park, where palm trees and live oaks cast shadows beneath street lamps that were becoming fewer and farther between. As they reached the amphitheater, the carriage slowed up, just as Calvin had warned and the blackmailer had said it would.

“Whoa,” Calvin said gently to his horse, bringing the carriage to a halt. He turned and faced the governor. “Now this is what I call the dark side of my tour, sir. For it was right here, where the old bandstand used to be, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirty-three, President-Elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a crowd of fifteen thousand people. Amidst that huge crowd there stood one very angry young man-a man who doctors would later describe as a highly intelligent psychopath with pet schemes and morbid emotions that ran in conflict with the established order of society. That disturbed young man stood patiently atop a park bench until the president finished his speech, then took out his revolver and fired over the crowd at the dignitaries onstage, intending to kill Mr. Roosevelt. The president escaped unhurt, but five innocent people were shot. The most seriously injured was Anton Cermak, the distinguished mayor of Chicago, who, before he died, told the president, ‘I’m glad it was me, instead of you.’ “

Calvin saw the expression on the governor’s face, then looked down apologetically. “Didn’t mean to frighten you, Guvnuh. I always tell that story to all my passengers, not just to politicians. Just a part of our history, that’s all.”

“That’s quite all right:’ he said, trying to ignore the chill running down his spine. But he wondered if his blackmailer knew that Calvin did indeed tell this story to all his passengers. Maybe that was the reason he had selected this particular carriage ride for the exchange. It was certainly possible-the man had apparently been planning this for two years, since the Fernandez execution. The governor suddenly wanted to hear more. “So, Calvin,” he said casually, “I imagine this assassination must have been pretty big news back in ’33.”

“Oh, sure. Was front-page news for about a month or so, as I recall.”

“What happened to the assassin?”

Calvin widened his eyes and raised his bushy white eyebrows. “I don’t mean no disrespect, sir. But this man pulled out a pistol in front of fifteen thousand people, fired six shots at the president of the United States, wounded five people and done killed the mayor of Chicago. They dragged him into court, where he proceeded to tell the world that his only regret was that he didn’t get Mr. Roosevelt. And to top it all off, the man begged the judge to give him the chair. Now whatchoo think they done to that fool?”

“Executed him,” he said quietly.

“Course they executed him. Four days after they laid Mayor Cermak’s dead body in the ground they done did execute him. Swift justice was what we had back then. Not like we got these days. All these lawyers we got now, hemmin’ and hawin’ and flappin’ their jaws. Appealin’ this and delayin’ that. Anyhow,” Calvin said with sigh, “that’s enough bellyachin’. I’m gonna let Daisy rest a spell and get myself a nice iced tea. Somethin’ for you, Guvnuh?”

“No, thank you, Calvin. I’ll wait here.” Harry watched the old man hobble over to the concession stand and he began to wonder about this whole curious arrangement. Was the blackmailer revealing his deeper, darker side-the “morbid emotions that ran at conflict with the established order of society?” Could he be that clever, that he had purposefully sent the governor to this old tour guide who in his own melodramatic way could make so painfully obvious the difference between the relatively easy capital cases and the unbearably difficult ones, between a man who boasts of his crime all the way to the electric chair and a man who proclaims his innocence to the end-between a crazed political assassin and someone like Raul Fernandez? Or maybe the message was less subtle, less philosophical. Maybe he was simply telling the governor that the very site of Florida’s most famous political assassination was about to be the site of its next political assassination-tonight.

Harry glanced nervously toward Calvin, who was smiling and chatting with the concessionaire, an attractive young Hispanic woman whose shapely appearance alone explained the regularity of Calvin’s nine o’clock stops. He pulled the carriage blanket over his lap, even though it was seventy-five degrees outside, so as to hide his movements. Then he touched the edge of the red velvet seat cushion beside him and got ready to lift it off. His heart began to race as he suddenly wondered whether a pistol-wielding madman would leap from the darkness or a bomb would explode when he lifted the carriage seat, writing the final chapter to Calvin’s history lesson. He took a deep breath and pulled up. The seat popped out, just as his blackmailer had said it would. No explosion. No rattlesnakes inside. He checked over his shoulder to make sure no one was looking. Again he sensed he was being watched. But he saw nothing. He looked down to see what was beneath the seat.

Inside the little cubbyhole was a brown shoe box, with a note on the side: “Leave the money. Take the box.” There was no signature. Only this warning: “I’m watching you.”

The governor didn’t dare turn his head to look around. He opened the briefcase in his shopping bag, emptied two stacks of crisp fifty-dollar bills under the seat, stuffed the shoe box into his bag, and put the seat cover back in place.

Calvin returned a few minutes later, and the ride back to Bayside Marketplace took only a few minutes more, though it seemed like an eternity. Harry thanked Calvin for the ride and quickly retraced his steps across the busy street to his car. As soon as he was behind the wheel, he set the shopping bag on the front seat beside him and took a deep breath, relieved that no one had stopped him. He turned on the ignition, but before he could pull into traffic he was startled by a short, high pitched ring. It stopped, and then started up again. It seemed to emanate from the box inside the shopping bag He took the shoe box from the bag and unfastened the tape on the lid. The shrill ringing continued. He flipped off the top and found a portable phone inside, resting on top of a sealed white envelope. He switched on the “talk” button and pressed the phone to his ear.

“It’s in the envelope,” came the familiar, thickly disguised voice.

The governor shuddered. Of course it would be him, but he was disturbed by the voice nonetheless. “What’s in the envelope?”

“You have to ask, Governor?” came the reply. “I have your money, and you’ve got the proof it was me, not Raul, who killed the girl. That was our deal, wasn’t it?”

The governor was silent.

“Was that our deal, Governor?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Good,” said the caller in a calmer voice. “Now open the envelope. Just open it. Don’t take anything out.”

Harry tucked the phone under his chin and unsealed the envelope. “It’s open.”

“There’s two photographs inside, both of the girl Raul got the chair for. Take out the one on the left.”

The governor removed the snapshot from the envelope and froze. It was a photo of a teenage girl from her bare breasts up. She was lying on her back with her shoulders pinned behind her, as if her hands were bound tightly behind her back. A red bandanna gagged her mouth. The long blade of a knife pressed against her throat. Her blood-shot eyes stared up helplessly at her killer. The rest of her face was puffy and bruised from unmerciful beatings.

“You see it, my man?”

“Yes,” his voice trembled.

“That’s real fear in those eyes. You can’t fake that. Sometimes I wish I’d videotaped it. But no need, really. I play it over and over again in my mind. It’s like a movie. I call it ‘The Taming of Vanessa.’ Vanessa was her name, you know. It’s nice to know their name. Makes it all more real.”

The photograph shook in the governor’s hand as his whole body was overcome by fear and disgust.

“Take out the next picture,” said the caller.

Harry closed his eyes and sighed. It would have been difficult to look under any circumstances, but it was doubly painful now, realizing that Raul Fernandez was not responsible for this girl’s death. The enormity of the governor’s mistake was beginning to sink in, and all at once he was filled with self-loathing. “I’ve seen enough,” he said quietly.

“Look at the next one. Look what I did with the knife.”

“I said I’ve seen enough,” Harry said firmly as he shoved the photo back into the envelope. “You’ve got your money, you monster. Just take it. That was our deal. Take it, keep your mouth shut, and don’t ever call me again.”

The caller chuckled with amusement. “Harry, Harry-that’s not how the game is played. We’re just getting started, you and me. Next installment’s in a few days.”

“I m not paying you another cent.”

“Such conviction. I guess you still can’t feel that noose around your neck. Here, give this a listen.”

The governor pressed the phone closer to his ear, straining to hear every sound. There was a click, then static, then a clicking sound again-and then a voice he clearly recognized as his own: “You’ve got your money, you monster Just take it. That was our deal. Take it, keep your mouth shut, and don’t ever call me again.”

Another click, and the caller was back on the line. “It’s all on tape, my man. You, the esteemed Governor Harold Swyteck, bribing an admitted killer to keep his mouth shut to save your own political skin. Every word of it s on tape-and ready to go to the newspapers.”

“You wouldn’t-”

“I would. So consider your piddling ten grand as nothing more than a down payment. Because you’re gonna a take another ten thousand dollars to four-oh-nine East Adams Street, Miami, apartment two-seventeen. Be there at four A.M., August second. Not a minute before not a minute after. The door will be open. Leave it right on the kitchen table. Be good, my man.”

“You son of a-” the governor started to say, but the caller was gone. A wave of panic overcame him. He pitched the phone and the envelope into the box beside him, holding his head in his hands as a deep pit of nausea swelled in his stomach. “You idiot,” he groaned aloud, sinking in his car seat. But it wasn’t just his own stupidity that had him shaking. It was the whole night that sent a current of fear coursing through him. The “history lesson” in the park, the photographs of the young girl, the tape recording in the car-and, most of all, the dawning realization that in this confrontation with a cold-blooded killer, he was clearly overmatched.