James Grippando: When Darkness Falls

“I’m a smart guy. Keep my nose clean.”

“You ever had any contact with the outreach people from Citrus Health Network, or any of the folks over at the mental health clinic at Jackson?”

“There’s this woman named Shirley who used to come visit me. Kept trying to get me to come with her back to the hospital and get some meds.”

“Did you go?”

“No.”

“Did Shirley ever tell you what kind of a condition you might have?”

“In her opinion I showed signs of paranoia, but she thought I was well compensated.”

“What did you say to that?”

“I said thank you very much, it sure sucks to be crazy, but it’s nice to have a big dick.”

Jack ignored it. “Have the police ever come to take you by force to a crisis center for a few hours, or maybe even a day or two? Has anything like that ever happened to you?”

“You mean have I ever been Baker-Acted?”

It didn’t surprise Jack that he knew the terminology. He was definitely well compensated, psychologically speaking. “Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.”

“If I was crazy, they’d have me over in the A Wing.”

The A Wing at Miami-Dade county jail was for psychiatric patients. “No one’s saying you’re crazy,” said Jack.

“You people are the crazies. You’re the ones who walk around pretending that guys like me are invisible.”

Jack didn’t disagree. Still, he jotted “possible anasognosia” in his notes, a medical term he’d picked up while working death cases. It meant the inability to recognize your own illness.

“We’ll talk more about that later,” said Jack. “Right now, let me explain what’s going to happen today. You’re charged with a variety of things. Obstructing a bridge, obstructing a highway, creating a public nuisance, indecent exposure-”

“I had to piss.”

“You probably should have come down from the lamppost to do it. But hey, hindsight’s twenty-twenty.” Jack continued with the list: “Resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer-”

“That’s a total joke. Paulo told me that if I came down, I could talk to the mayor’s daughter. The minute my feet hit the ground, three SWAT guys were all over me. Of course I resisted.”

“I’m just reciting the charges, I’m not the one bringing them.”

“What kind of a country is this anyway? A guy wants to jump off a bridge, why should it be illegal?”

“Well, if they made it legal, then you’d have everybody wanting to do it. Kind of like gay marriage.”

“The only reason they’re going after me like this is because I asked to talk to the mayor’s daughter.”

“Now that you bring it up, exactly what did you want to say to her?”

“That’s between me and her.”

“I have to correct you there, pal. If I’m going to be your lawyer, let’s get something straight from the get-go: There’s nothing between you and Alicia Mendoza.”

A worm of a smile crept across Falcon’s lips, a kind of satisfied smirk that Jack had seen before-but only on death row. “You’re wrong,” said Falcon. “Dead wrong. I know she wants to talk to me. She wants to talk to me real bad.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw her standing by that police van. I’m sure it was Alicia. I asked her to come, and she came. They just wouldn’t let her talk to me.”

“That’s probably because they didn’t want to do anything to encourage the obsession.”

“I’m not stalking her,” he said sharply. “I just want to talk to her.”

“Mayor Mendoza probably doesn’t appreciate the distinction. Most people wouldn’t.”

“Then why didn’t they bring any stalker charges against me?”

“You only contacted her once, so trying to prove stalking would needlessly complicate the case. You gave the government a much easier way to put you away for a good long time. It’s called possession of narcotics. That’s also on the list, and it’s a felony, my friend.”

“I didn’t have no crack.”

“It was in your coat pocket.”

“I didn’t put it there.”

“Uh, yeah,” said Jack. “Save it for another day. All we have to do this morning is enter a plea of not guilty, no explanation needed. The judge will hear briefly from me on the issue of bail. I’ll argue this, that, and the other thing. The prosecutor will say it’s this way, that way, and the other way. After everyone’s had their say, the judge will stop counting the number of tiles in the ceiling and set bail at ten thousand dollars, which is pretty standard in a possession case like this one.”

“How soon do they need it?”

“Need what?”

“The ten thousand dollars?”

Jack was amused by the question. “As soon as you can get it, you’re out of jail. Or we can post a bond. You’d have to come up with ten percent-a thousand dollars-which is nonrefundable. And you’d have to pledge sufficient collateral for the balance. All this is academic, I’m sure, since you obviously don’t have ten cents, let alone-”

“Not a problem. I got the ten grand.”

“What?”

“I don’t need to post no bond. I can pay the ten thousand dollars.”

“You can’t even pay me,” said Jack, scoffing.

“I can pay you, and I can make bail.”

“You live in an abandoned automobile. Where are you going to get your hands on that kind of cash?”

Falcon reached across the table and laid his hand, palm down, flat atop Jack’s notepad. The fingernails were deformed and discolored from a fungus of some kind, and that open sore on the back of his hand was oozing white pus. For the first time, however, Jack detected a sparkle-some sign of life-in those cold, dark eyes. “Take notes,” he said in a low, serious tone. “I’ll tell you exactly where to find it.”

J ack’s flight landed in Nassau just after nine a.m. He hated small aircraft, but a forty-five-minute hop over the Gulf Stream on Zack’s Seaplanes came at an irresistible price. It was absolutely free, thanks to Theo Knight.

Theo was Jack’s all-purpose assistant, for lack of a better term. Whatever Jack needed, Theo went and got it, though Jack knew better than to ask how he got it done. Theirs was not a textbook friendship, the Ivy League son of a governor meets the black high-school dropout from Liberty City. But they got on just fine for two guys who’d met on death row, Jack the lawyer and Theo the inmate. Jack’s persistence had delayed Theo’s date with the electric chair long enough for DNA evidence to come into vogue and prove him innocent. It wasn’t the original plan, but Jack ended up a part of Theo’s new life, sometimes going along for the ride, other times just watching with envy and amazement as Theo made up for precious time lost.

This time, it was Theo’s turn to go along for the ride-to Falcon’s bank.

“Greater Bahamian Bank and Trust Company,” said Theo, reading the sign on the building. “I hope they got casinos in here.”

Jack had called the bank beforehand and confirmed that it did in fact have a safe deposit box for Pablo Garcia. He then faxed over the executed power of attorney, which would authorize him to access the box. Sure enough, the signature of his client matched the specimen on file at the bank. Jack still didn’t believe there was money inside, but the flight was free, and even a break-even day at the casinos beat a good day in the office, especially if Theo was the one rolling the dice. He didn’t always win, but the guy never seemed to lose money at the crap table. Jack didn’t dare ask him how he did that, either.

Bay Street was essentially Main Street for high-powered finance in the Bahamas, and the Greater Bahamian Bank amp; Trust Company represented one of hundreds of foreign institutions that thrived on the legal protections and secrecy that countries like the Bahamas afforded to offshore branches. While there were many recognizable names-Royal Bank of Canada, Barclay’s, Bank of Nova Scotia, and others-some of these so-called banks looked more like a doctor’s office, basically just an office in a strip mall that might as well bear the name JOE’S BANK OF THE CARRIBEAN. Greater Bahamian was somewhere between the two extremes, occupying the ground floor of a three-story building. The main entrance to the bank was tidy and simple, a mix of chrome, glass, and indoor-outdoor carpet. Two security guards patrolled the lobby, each packing a nine-millimeter pistol in a black leather holster. Another armed guard stood watch at the door. Theo greeted him with a folksy “How goes it, bro?” The same greeting from Jack would have come across like Garth Brooks doing rap. Theo, however, was an imposing man with the brawn of a linebacker and the height of an NBA star, sort of a cross between The Rock and a young Samuel L. Jackson on steroids. Just to look at him, you would guess (correctly) that he’d spent time in prison. That bad-boy image served him well. Very few people ever got in his way. The rest of the world-even armed security guards-just stepped aside and smiled, hoping that “How goes it, bro” was Theo’s way of saying “Relax, dude, I don’t have time to rearrange your face.” On occasion, Jack needed a friend with that kind of firepower. Mostly, he found Theo entertaining, like cable TV and satellite radio rolled into one big, amusing, friend-for-life subscription.