James Grippando - Afraid of the Dark

“You see?” said Grandpa. “I told you.”

Jack was confused, but then it hit him. He’d been in such a daze that he was still wearing the yarmulke from Neil’s funeral, completely unaware of it.

“I wore it out of respect for a friend,” said Jack as he removed it. “We buried Neil today.”

“Neil who?”

It saddened Jack that his grandfather didn’t remember. “Neil Goderich.”

“Goderich? That sounds about as Jewish as Petrak.”

“The original family name was Goldsmith. They changed it to hide from the Nazis.”

Grandpa nodded-as if he truly understood-and it had Jack’s mind working overtime. For more than a week, Jack had been thinking about his conversation with Grandpa’s lady friend-specifically, Ruth’s mention of how the stage play about Pio Nono and Edgardo Mortara had deeply affected Jack’s grandfather. Then, in Washington, Neil had explained his own family name change, which prompted Jack to do some research on Jews who had fought to survive by hiding their Jewishness from the Nazis. Sometimes a name change was just the start. Some Jewish children were sent to live with gentile families. In the saddest cases, young children whose parents were taken away to die in concentration camps grew up in non-Jewish homes without knowing that they were Jewish. As the Greatest Generation passed, deathbeds and nursing homes had a way of letting those secrets loose.

Jack presumed that his grandfather still had relatives named Petrak in the Czech Republic. He was starting to wonder if he had lost other relatives on his great-grandmother’s side-perhaps those who hadn’t changed their name to Petrak to survive the war.

“Grandpa?” asked Jack.

His eyes were closed. Jack was about to nudge him, but his cell rang. Not even the Carrie Underwood ringtone that Andie had programmed into Jack’s phone was enough to get a reaction from Grandpa. The caller ID said PRIVATE, and Jack had a feeling that it was Andie. He was right.

“I’m so sorry,” said Andie. “I just heard about Neil.”

Jack rose and went to the other side of the room, away from Grandpa, to bring Andie up to speed. He hit the highlights quickly, ending with the double murder of Neil and his new client-and how it was no coincidence that they were on a mission to unravel one of the threads that seemed to lead all the way back to a secret detention facility in Prague.

“I’m coming home,” said Andie.

“How long can you stay?”

“I’m putting in a request for at least a week. Longer, if I can swing it.”

That was good news on one level, but it gave Jack pause. “Honey, I want to see you, and I’m definitely down in the dumps. But I don’t want your career to take a hit over this.”

“Don’t you understand how dangerous this has become? Your client and your partner are dead: first Jamal Wakefield, now Neil. Has it occurred to you that someone out there might think that the third one’s the charm?”

It had, especially after the threat against his grandfather, but Jack didn’t want to go there.

“Harry!” Grandpa shouted, calling for Jack’s father. “Harry, where are you?”

Jack asked Andie to hold on, went to the bedside, and spoke in a soothing tone. “Harry is not here, Grandpa.”

“Harry!” he shouted.

The nurse muttered under her breath about his “combativeness,” and she grabbed him hard by the wrists. Jack reached over and grabbed hers. She didn’t seem to like it, either.

“Grandpa, it’s okay,” Jack said as he stroked his head. Grandpa settled down, but he continued to mumble about Pio Nono and his curious obsession with Pope Pius IX.

Andie’s voice was on the phone. “Jack, is everything okay?”

“Yes. Just a little confusion, that’s all.”

Jack glanced at the nurse, and she seemed to take his cue that gentle was better, even if it did take a little more time than grabbing an octogenarian like a steer and strapping him to the bed. Jack stepped aside but stayed in the room to keep an eye on things.

“Listen to me,” said Andie. “I’m coming home as soon as I can. Hopefully this weekend. But promise me that you are not going to take this into your own hands. You have to let the police do their work.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t say ‘sure.’ I want you to promise that you won’t.”

Jack struggled for a response. As the future Mrs. Swyteck, Andie was perfectly within her rights to reel him in, and her concern wasn’t at all out of line. There was just one problem. Neil was gone. And he was never coming back.

It was personal now.

“I promise you,” said Jack, “that I will never make you a promise that I can’t keep.”

Chuck Mays woke early on Sunday, skipped breakfast, and drove to the cemetery. Vince and Sam rode along, the dog in the backseat with his snout out the window. The Maserati handled the curves along the tree-lined highway with ease, and the way Sam was breathing in another perfect south Florida morning almost made Chuck jealous. It was Chuck’s intention to express his condolences to Neil Goderich’s widow at some point. But not today. In fact, he was nowhere near Miami Beach, where Neil had been buried two days earlier. Charlotte Jane Memorial Park was in Coconut Grove. It was McKenna’s final resting place.

Sunday would have been her nineteenth birthday.

Chuck parked on Franklin Avenue and followed the sidewalk around the corner to the main entrance. Older than the city of Miami itself, and situated on a few silent acres in West Coconut Grove, Charlotte Jane Memorial Park was in some ways the departed soul of a neighborhood that was rich in history and plagued by crime. Multimillion-dollar estates lay between the bay to the east and, to the west, the old Grove ghetto, where gunfights in run-down bars and package stores were all too common, and the “have-nots” tried not to get caught in the crossfire. After dark, street corners on Grand Avenue could service just about anyone’s bad habit, from gangs with their random hits to doctors and lawyers who ventured out into the night in deference to their addictions. But within Charlotte Jane’s iron gates rested the early settlers who sailed across the Florida Straits from the Bahamas. Shada’s family was from the islands, and she had chosen this historic cemetery for McKenna. Chuck was ashamed to admit it, but he had been too distraught to make such decisions. The fact that it was within a stone’s throw of south Florida’s oldest African-American Baptist church hadn’t fazed his wife. Shada’s father was Muslim, but religion had never been important in her life.

Chuck stood beneath the arching ironwork at the entrance gate and drew a breath. Even by Coconut Grove standards, Charlotte Jane was a unique burial ground. As was the old Bahamian way, bodies rested aboveground in tombs that looked like stone caskets. Tombs were so close together that visitors barely had enough room to step between them. Some were their original stone color, but others were painted white or silver and looked brilliant in the Florida sun. Many were in disrepair, however, either deteriorating with age or the target of vandals. Spanish moss hung from sprawling oak limbs like dusty old spiderwebs from a chandelier, and the overall impression was more one of haunted than hallowed ground. Chuck was fine with it. McKenna probably would have found it cool that Michael Jackson had filmed part of his famous Thriller video here-or at least that was the Miami lore.

“You okay?” asked Vince.

“I guess so.”

A large sign at the entrance warned him to lock his car and take his valuables with him. He hadn’t bothered. Visiting his daughter’s grave made it impossible to give a hoot about petty theft.