James Grippando - Blood Money

“Dude, I been calling your cell for an hour. You all right?”

“Yeah, fine. I was just out of it.”

Theo smiled. “Good drugs?”

“Mi vida,” said Abuela. Jack’s grandmother was a few steps behind Theo, shuffling through the open doorway as quickly as she could. “Mi vida” -literally “my life”-was what she always called Jack, what he meant to her. They embraced, and Jack tried to say something reassuring in her native tongue, which, as usual, he mangled. She winced and covered her ears.

“Ay. English, por favor.”

Jack’s Spanish was notoriously bad. The death of his Cuban American mother in childbirth left him “culturally challenged,” a half-Cuban boy in a completely Anglo home with no link to his Hispanic heritage. Decades later, when Jack was in his thirties, Abuela had finally fled Cuba. For a time, her mission in life had been to give her gringo grandson a crash course in everything Cuban. He’d worked his way up to a C-minus before she’d virtually given up on making him fluent.

“Your neck!” said Abuela.

“It looks worse than it feels,” Jack said.

“When you last eat?” Her English was only slightly better than Jack’s Spanish.

“I don’t remember.”

Abuela shook her head and went to the kitchen. Keeping him fed was the one aspect of his cultural education that had not failed. Jack closed the door, and he and Theo sat in the living room while Abuela searched the cupboard for something that in her book even remotely qualified as “food.”

“Thanks for staying with Abuela last night,” said Jack.

“No problem. What’s the plan going forward?”

“I don’t know. We can’t leave her exposed. The threat was against ‘someone you love.’”

“And you assume that means Abuela, not me?” Theo said with a cheesy grin.

Jack ignored it. “I don’t assume it’s Abuela. We’re just being cautious. Andie thinks the threat is directed at her.”

Theo glanced around the place. “Where is Andie?”

“Work.”

“Everything good between you two?”

“Yeah, fine.”

Theo chuckled. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Jack was taken aback. “Did you talk to her?”

“Nah, I read the blog.”

“The blog?”

“BNN: no-blood-money.com.”

“Bonnie showed that to me. What are you reading that trash for?”

Theo shrugged. “I take my bodyguard role seriously. Gotta suck up all the information I can.”

“That’s even less reliable than Faith Corso.”

“What are you talking about? It is Faith Corso.”

“No, it’s not. Bonnie showed me the site. Corso was just a guest blogger, and there was a link to BNN.”

“Not anymore. Faith Corso’s picture is all over it,” Theo said as he retrieved it on his iPhone. “Look at the address: www.BNN/FaithCorso/no-blood-money.com.”

“Corso must have liked it so much, she took it over.”

“Anyway, this morning’s front page is all about your ass-kicking.”

“I didn’t get my ass-”

“Dude, I saw the picture. Nice neck brace.”

“Damn, I knew I should have taken that thing off.”

“Wouldn’t have mattered. Looks like the picture was taken inside the ER. Kind of grainy, like maybe a nurse or another patient snapped it with a cell phone from far away and then had to blow it up. Anyway, it’s the other picture that’s the money shot. You and Andie arguing outside the hospital. The caption says your fiancee dumped you.”

Jack groaned.

“Clever headline, actually: ‘Broken Neck, Broken Heart for Shot Mom’s Lawyer.’”

“Oh, my God.”

“Is it true?” asked Theo. “You and Andie, kaput?”

“No. Not exactly.”

“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?”

“Andie isn’t happy about the publicity this case is getting. She’s afraid the bureau might rethink her role as an undercover agent. When some jackass jumped out of the bushes and snapped our picture last night, it sent her over the edge. We decided to separate for a few days until the hoopla blows over.”

“Cool. So you’re single?”

“No, I’m not single. This is temporary.”

“Really? Do you mean ‘temporary,’ as in temporary custody of the children awarded to the mother, pending finalization of the divorce, which always means permanent? Or do you mean ‘temporary,’ as in temporarily laid off, which means permanent only ninety-nine percent of the time?”

“Why are you such a smart-ass?”

Jack heard his cell vibrating on the kitchen counter. He got up and checked it. The incoming number was unfamiliar at first, but something in the back of his mind made him realize that he’d seen it before. The text message confirmed his hunch. The sender was definitely no stranger.

“Something wrong?” asked Theo.

Jack cleared the look of surprise from his face. “It’s from Rene,” he said.

“Wha-a-at?” said Theo, chuckling. “See, dude, you are single. Man, word sure travels fast.”

Rene had been Jack’s most serious steady after his divorce-until Andie had come along. Jack had sometimes wondered “what might have been” between them if she hadn’t been so geographically undesirable. The last time they’d talked, Rene was committed to Children First in West Africa.

“She works at Jackson now,” said Jack.

“Yeah, so?”

“That’s where Celeste Laramore is hospitalized.”

“Interesting.”

“Says she needs to talk to me about the Laramores.” Jack glanced again at the message, then read aloud the last two words that Rene had typed in all caps. “VERY IMPORTANT.”

Jack drove across town to meet Rene for coffee.

They were in agreement that the hospital was not the place to have a talk about the Laramores, but selecting an alternative had been surprisingly difficult, each trying to suggest a spot that was familiar enough to be findable, while at the same time avoiding a place with too many memories. They’d settled on San Lazaro’s Cafe in Little Havana, close enough to Jackson for Rene to get away on her break, but far enough to ensure that none of the reporters on “coma watch” would happen by.

Jack found her at a booth in the back, near a sixty-year-old map of pre-Castro Cuba. She rose to greet him, and they exchanged an awkward air kiss that made them both smile.

“How you been?” he asked as they settled into the booth.

“Good, you?”

Rene signaled the waitress to bring another cafe con leche for Jack. Small talk abounded as they waited for the coffee to arrive. Memories flowed, too.

The first time Jack had laid eyes on Rene she had been covered with dust, like everything else in the grasslands of the Cote d’Ivoire when the Harmattan winds blew each autumn. She had been running a children’s clinic in Korhogo, and over a light lunch that involved some kind of unidentifiable meat, Jack found himself captivated by a woman who fully understood why he had turned down the big bucks of private practice to work long hours for little pay at a place like the Freedom Institute. The next day, a stunning strawberry blonde sans dust showed up in a dilapidated Land Rover for a trip to the cocoa region, and Jack’s tumble was complete. From then on, virtually every spare dime went to round-trip airfare between Abidjan and Miami.

Inevitably, geography took its toll.

The coffee arrived. As Jack stirred in a packet of raw sugar, Rene leaned closer, almost halfway across the table. A man less committed to his fiancee would have simply grabbed an eyeful of cleavage. Jack squirmed.

“You like my necklace?” she asked.

“Oh, your necklace.” He took a closer look. It appeared to be made of copper, with a colorful bead. “Pretty. Looks like an African work of art.”