Last Call (6 page)

“I’m not riding anybody’s back.”

“So it’s all in my head, is that it? It’s always been just my imagination.”

“Jack, please. Before . . .” She paused, as if wary of their immediate past. “When you and I were . . . you know, together, I wasn’t forcing you to choose between me and Theo.”

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“You said if I stayed friends with him, he was going to get me disbarred someday.”

“I wasn’t even serious. Give me a little credit. I fully understand that Theo’s your friend.”

“Best friend.”

“Okay. Best friend. And I like Theo too. Really I do. I just made a stupid joke.”

“That’s the funny thing about stupid jokes.They’re loaded with truth.”

“Not this one.”

“Is that what you came here to tell me?”

She made a face, as if trying to stave off a migraine.“No. I came here to talk about Isaac Reems, and now I’ve bumbled the whole thing. I’m sorry.”

“I am too. But you know what I’m most sorry about? Every time something goes wrong in this city, it seems like Theo’s on somebody’s list of suspects.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Then why did you write his name in your notepad?”

“There’s been a prison break, and the latest advisory said that Reems was last seen at Sparky’s around two thirty in the morning.”

“Oh, I see. So you put two and two together and figure that—”

“I’m not figuring anything, Jack. Can we please just drop the whole Theo thing?”

Behind him, in the kitchen, the California door slid open.

Rene stuck her head inside and called to him from the other side of the house.“Are you almost ready?”

“I’ll be right there.”

Rene turned and walked toward the dock behind the house, but she left the sliding door open. Jack looked at Andie and said,

“Anything else?”

“No.You go ahead. I think we’re done.”

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We’re done.
The awkward choice of words registered on his face as well as hers.

“Okay, I’ll see you,” he said.

“See ya.” For a moment she seemed to wonder if they should shake hands. They didn’t. She just thanked him the way she would have thanked any witness for his time and headed for her car.

He called to her as she reached his driveway.

She stopped.“Yeah?”

“Take care of yourself, all right?” he said.

She shrugged, gave a halfhearted smile, and said, “You know I will.”

Jack watched as she opened the car door.“Hey, Andie,” he said before she could climb behind the wheel.

“What?”

Jack paused, summoning the right tone of voice. “If you’re thinking about talking to Theo, don’t. He has a lawyer.”

Andie didn’t answer, but she seemed to understand that it wasn’t anything personal—that Jack was simply tired of the cops harassing his friend, and that Theo deserved better. She got in her car and drove away.

Jack shut the door and leaned against it, thinking for moment, and finally chastising himself for thinking way too much.
Stop overanalyzing everything, already.

He grabbed the boat keys from the kitchen counter and went to find Rene, curious to know which CDs she’d chosen—and wondering if, by chance, she had chosen his and Andie’s favorite.

Uncle Cy felt like he owned the place.

It sounded like an oxymoron, but Theo said he had “personal business” in the upper Keys, so he left his uncle in charge of Sparky’s Tavern until his return. Cy was all over the chance to live 46

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out this fantasy—even if the bikers and rednecks did outnumber the brothas and jazz lovers by about fifty to one.

“Hey, Lenny,” said Cy. “Can you replace the number two keg for me?”

Theo’s assistant was at the other end of the bar, setting up for the Saturday night crowd. If the rum he was stocking was 80 proof, it posted a bigger number than Lenny’s IQ.“Sure thing, boss.”

Boss.
The very ring of it made the old man smile.

The day had been absolutely perfect, just him and Theo, the old sax and the new sax.They’d made it to only one of the old bars Cy had played in his youth—Tobacco Road, which Theo also played on occasion—but they vowed to hit all of his old spots eventually, one at a time, a regular outing. More important, they also agreed that the vacant restaurant with the U-shaped bar was
the
spot for Sparky’s II. He sure hoped Theo could nail it down. Hell, was there really anything to worry about? This was Theo Knight, his nephew, a punk from the ghetto who’d survived death row and then named his first bar Sparky’s—a double-barreled flip of the bird to Florida’s old electric chair, nicknamed “Old Sparky.”Theo often said that his uncle was his hero. In truth,Theo was Cy’s hero.

“Lenny, the keg, please.”

Cyrus Knight didn’t have many perfect days in his life story.

At least not that he remembered. The culprit was drugs. From the very beginning, friends had begged him not to let customers buy him drinks.Take the tips in cash, they warned him, not liquor. But it seemed rude to refuse a gin-and-tonic from a good-natured guy who swears you’re the next Charlie Parker. So he drank. All night.

While he played. On his breaks. After his gig. He drank before he went to bed at 5 a.m., and he drank some more when he woke the following afternoon. Before he knew it, he’d burned through the best years of his life as a full-blown alcoholic.Then a pothead.Then a coke fiend. And it only got worse. His arms still bore traces of the track marks to prove it.

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It was no wonder that he threatened to kill Theo if ever he caught him drinking when he played.

“Lenny! The keg already.”

“I’m getting to it, boss.”

Nice kid, but he had the work ethic of a sloth. “Hell, I’ll do it myself.”

Cy untapped the spent keg first. As he rose from his crouch, however, a sudden wave of nausea sent the room spinning. He leaned on the edge of the sink behind the bar to support his weight.

It would pass in a minute, for sure. He was actually getting used to these spells. Damn blood pressure medicine didn’t agree with him one bit.

Getting old sucks.

He splashed cold water on his face and breathed in and out, slowly and deeply. Better already. He drew a breath and headed toward the stockroom.

Lenny looked up from behind the cash register. “Boss, I said I’d get it.”

“Right. Just like the check’s in her mouth, and I won’t come in the mail.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

He found a handcart near the door, but it was plain to see that the full-sized keg was beyond his strength. He went behind the tower of stacked kegs in search of a pony keg, something more his size.There he found just about everything except what he was looking for. He saw plastic bags filled with trash that needed to be taken out and dozens of crushed boxes. There were cans of beer that had broken loose from the twenty-four-pack, an assortment of liquor bottles, and some empty cigarette packages. He spotted several broken cocktail glasses, a cockroach or two, a rat trap.

And an orange jumpsuit.

He stooped down and tugged at the hem, pulling the garment 48

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toward him slowly, his heart thumping, though deep inside he already knew what it was.The name and number printed on the left breast pocket confirmed his fears.

REEMS 007516.

The nausea was back, but it had nothing to do with the medication. All perfect days had to end.This one had just ended a little sooner than he thought it would.

Damn it,Theo. Damn it all to hell, boy.

Chapter 6

I saac Reems needed a girlfriend.

He’d studied other prison breaks as part of his months-long preparation, mostly by trading stories with inmates.

There was no single formula for success. But the smart guys always had a girlfriend—it was never a wife—waiting on the outside to help them evade law enforcement and melt back into society. With the girlfriend came a fast car, plenty of cash, new clothes, disguises, phony identification, guns and ammunition, food and liquor, a place to hide, and—chicks just dig fugitives—great sex galore. But Isaac figured out a way to get all he needed without a woman, and so long as he had money, even the pussy would follow.

Eighteen hours on the run proved him dead wrong. Sad to say, but in situations like these, girlfriends were the only friends a man could count on.

Thanks for nothin’, brothas.

Isaac was laying flat on a hard tile floor, staring up at the kitchen ceiling. He’d actually dozed off, probably hadn’t moved in at least two hours. A realtor’s for sale sign posted in the yard had lured him inside. The modest house, a three-bedroom, two-bath concrete shoebox in a middle-class neighborhood, was completely empty, not a stick of furniture anywhere. The reduced sign out front suggested that the owners had packed up their belongings long ago and moved everything to their new house. It took Isaac all of three minutes to bypass the cheap home alarm system, and the lock on the back door had been mere child’s play for the for-50

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mer leader of the Grove Lords. Hard to imagine a more opportune hideout for a dude with no girlfriend.

Isaac pushed himself up from the floor and noticed that his back was stiff. He’d been hitting the prison gym hard for several weeks before his breakout, trying to get himself into top condition. Still, his thirty-five-year-old body wasn’t quite ready for that jump out of a second-story window at the Turner Guilford Knight Corrections Center and the scramble over the nine-foot perimeter fence.Things should have gotten easier after those hurdles, and he probably wouldn’t have felt so sore now if the escape had gone according to plan. Deals of all sorts could be cut from inside prison walls, and Isaac had lined up the big items before making his break.

A set of wheels with the keys in the glove compartment and a change of clothes in the trunk was supposed to be waiting for him in the parking lot at the 7-Eleven. His new pants were promised with two hundred bucks, small bills, in the pocket.

The car, of course, hadn’t been there.

Maybe he’d been screwed by his contacts—which wasn’t un-heard of in prison commerce. Or maybe some punks just happened by, noticed the unlocked and unattended vehicle, and stole his wheels. Either way, he couldn’t go back to his helpers. If it was a screw job, they couldn’t be trusted. If something had gone wrong—well, too bad, so sad: it wasn’t their fault.The deal was that Isaac would never make contact with them once he was on the outside. Nobody liked to be extorted twice.

With no wheels, he’d ended up running almost two miles, non-stop, to the Miami River. Had he known the guards at TGK were going to take so long to discover that he was missing, he might have driven the stolen boat all the way to the Bahamas. He wasn’t a boater, however, and the prospect of crossing the Gulf Stream alone, in the dead of night, was fraught with problems. Instead, he headed toward the Florida Keys, made it as far as the southern tip of the mainland, and hunted down Sparky’s Tavern. Plan B was LAST CALL

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working just fine until Theo called the cops. Now, law enforcement was all over south Miami-Dade County. He couldn’t even risk going into a store to buy new clothes.

Thanks for nothin’, brotha’.

Isaac walked down the hall toward the bathroom. A sudden noise startled him, and he dove to the floor. It was the air conditioner clicking on. He rose and checked the thermostat on the wall.

The owner had it set at eighty-five, just low enough to keep the humidity under control.The house was obviously being looked after even though it was empty. He was tempted to cool things down a few more degrees, but he decided to leave the setting alone. He used the toilet, and it flushed. He tried the sink. It didn’t work, but that was quickly remedied by adjusting the shut-off valve.The city water to the house was still on, one of the many blessings that came with escaping from prison in a state where no one had to worry about pipes freezing. He took a long drink from the faucet and washed his face. It felt so good and made him want more. He could shower and even rinse out the clothes he’d stolen from the homeless guy who was passed out behind Theo’s bar last night. He removed the coat, unbuttoned the shirt, and stripped down to the waist. His skin itched. The more he scratched, the more it itched.

He checked himself in the mirror over the sink. His chest was covered with welts. He grabbed the shirt and took a closer look. It was infested.

“Bugs!”

His scalp suddenly itched. He rubbed his head frantically with both hands.Tiny insects dropped from his hair and landed as little black dots on the white sink.

A string of hysterical and mostly nonsensical curse words followed, as he quickly kicked off his prison-issue Velcro shoes and ripped off the stolen pants. The socks and underwear were also from TGK, but they too were infested. He pitched all of it into the bathtub, turned on the showerhead, and jumped in. Hot water 52

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would have been nice, but that was asking way too much in a vacant house.The cold was more soothing to his insect bites anyway.

He rubbed, swatted, and scratched all through his shower, sending one nasty little black bug after another down the gurgling drain.

Then he started on the shirt, but it was so threadbare that even mild rubbing risked tearing it to shreds.The pants were more durable, but once they were wet, they smelled like a sewer.

The Grove Lord needed new clothes.

He turned off the shower. Dripping wet and wearing only his prison briefs, he set out to search the house in hopes that something had been left behind. He tried the linen closet in the hall.

Empty. He checked the two smaller bedrooms. Nothing. The garage was accessible from the kitchen, but in there he found only a few basic supplies that the maid or the realtor needed to keep the house presentable for potential buyers. He was walking through the living room to the master bedroom when, through the bay window in the front of the house, he spotted an old man and his dog on the sidewalk. Isaac hit the deck.