James Grippando - Last to die

“He spat on him?”

“Yeah,” he said as a dreamy smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Thank our lucky stars. He spat on him.”

They want you to submit a DNA specimen for testing,” said Jack.

Tatum wiped the beer-foam mustache from his lip, silent, as if his lawyer needed to say more before a response was merited.

A restaurant wasn’t Jack’s first choice of venue, but Tatum lived in north Miami Beach, and he’d groaned like a sick water buffalo about driving “all the way to Coral Gables” for a meeting with his lawyer. So Jack had suggested they meet for lunch at Gusto, a Cuban restaurant near the Lincoln Road area. The service was friendly and the food was good, perfect for a first date or a leisurely dinner with friends. But the colorful stories that came with the meal seemed downright goofy when the basic objective was to get your client to give up bodily fluids.

The waiter placed Jack’s medium-rare palomilla steak before him, then slid the house specialty in front of Tatum and said, “El balsero for you, señor.”

“What the hell’s this?” he asked. “I thought I ordered regular old shrimp.”

Jack said, “The special has shrimp in it. El balsero, they call it. It means ‘the rafter,’ I think.”

“Sí, sí. The rafter.” The waiter smiled proudly, and Jack smiled back, though somewhat bewildered. Jack had clients, friends, and even relatives who had actually come to Miami by raft, so he wasn’t quite sure what the politically correct reaction was to a dish called “the rafter.” But this was a Cuban restaurant, the waiter was more Cuban than he was, and a nostalgic mural of Havana Harbor was painted on the wall, so he just kept smiling.

Tatum was staring at his plate.

El balsero, the waiter explained, was the personal creation of a talented chef with a quirky sense of humor and, arguably, too much time on his hands. The banana-shaped raft was made from the hollowed-out shell of a plantain so lengthy that Freud would have had a psychological feast. The rafters inside were six stuffed shrimp tail-up and held fast by a tomato enchilada sauce. Thin french fries on either side of the raft were, naturally, the paddles.

“Looks more like a gondola than a raft,” said Tatum.

“I was thinking a canoe,” said Jack. “Say, Lewis and Clark paddling down a river of mojo sauce.”

“Ah,” the waiter said with a wide smile of recognition. “Sooper Mahn.”

“No, no, not Superman. That’s Lois and Clark. I’m talking about the nineteenth-century explorers-you know, Lewis, Clark, Sacajawea?”

The waiter just shrugged, lost. Jack considered trying to explain it in his stilted Spanish, then decided against it, figuring that although he wasn’t exactly ahead, he might as well quit while he wasn’t quite so far behind. “Never mind. Gracias por la comida,” he said, thanking him for the food.

“De nada,” he replied. You’re welcome.

Jack sprinkled chopped onions and parsley on his palomilla steak, poured the black beans over his white rice and added a little hot sauce, just the way he liked it. When he looked up, Tatum’s shrimp were gone.

“Pretty damn good,” Tatum said. “Lois was especially tasty.”

“Lewis,” he said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand.

Tatum sat back, seeming to have had his fill of shrimp passengers and small talk. He looked at Jack and said, “Tell me why I should give Larsen my DNA.”

“To get a swarming pack of homicide detectives off your back.”

“They think I killed Colletti,” he said, more a statement than a question.

“Of course they do.”

“I didn’t.”

“I know. Theo told me you two were out on his boat fishing last night. Didn’t get home till this morning.”

Tatum took another long drink from his tall glass of beer. “Did you tell the cops that?”

“Yes.”

“And they still want my DNA?”

“Larsen doesn’t put much stock in an alibi that can be corroborated only by your brother. Frankly, I don’t blame him.”

Tatum leaned into the table and said, “Is it that you don’t blame him? Or do you think Theo’s lying for me, too?”

Jack looked away, not sure how to answer. “Where are the fish, Tatum?”

“They weren’t biting,” he said flatly.

“Not a single one all night long, huh?”

“Fishermen come home empty-handed all the time. Theo even made a joke on the boat ride home, how it’s like Jack always says, this is why they call it fishin’ and not-”

“Catchin’, I know, I know. Look, the bottom line is, your alibi isn’t going to fly all by its lonesome. I talked face-to-face with Larsen this morning. I’m not saying they’re going to come out and arrest you tonight, tomorrow, or the next day. But the heat is on. I’m fielding calls from the cops, Miguel’s lawyer, lawyers for the dead heirs, the press. I’m starting to feel more like a juggler than a lawyer. Larsen’s offering us a scientific way to exonerate yourself before we drop all the balls and he comes to slap the cuffs on your wrists.”

“Explain this to me.”

“There’s a stain on Colletti’s suit. Turned out to be saliva, and there’s enough of it to allow for DNA testing. Since it was on his back, doesn’t seem likely it was from the victim, himself, so they think that whoever killed him also spat on him.”

“Pretty stupid thing to do.”

“Homicides can get personal, emotions take over. Anyway, the cops want a DNA sample from you. The lab compares the two, and if they don’t get a match-bingo, someone else jumps to the top of the list of suspects.”

“What if I say no?”

“If they have enough other evidence to link you to the crime, they could go for a court order, force you to give a hair sample, a cheek swab, something nonsurgical.”

Tatum picked at the empty shell of the plantain in his plate, saying nothing. Jack gave him a moment, then asked, “So, what do you say?”

Tatum looked up, his expression dead serious. “Let ’em arrest me.”

“What?”

He drained his beer, and said, “Sorry, Jack. I can’t give the cops my DNA.”

Theo understood, but he knew he could never explain it to Jack. It was Jack who’d told him about the meeting at the restaurant, and Jack was cool in Theo’s book, but a Yale-educated lawyer whose daddy was once a governor couldn’t even begin to understand why Tatum wouldn’t give a DNA sample. Didn’t matter how cool Jack was. Only Theo could understand, but that didn’t mean he agreed with the decision. He’d even called Tatum himself, which got him exactly nowhere.

“This could prove you innocent. Don’t you see that, man?”

“I’m not givin’ no DNA.”

“But this shit works. A DNA test is what got me off death row.”

“You didn’t have no choice, Theo. You was already on death row.”

“And that’s where they wants to put you, too. Take the test.”

“No.”

“Shee-it, Tatum, why the hell not? We was out fishing all night. You’re innocent. I knows you’re innocent.”

“Then stop askin’ me to take the fucking test.”

The conversation could have lasted another thirty years, and Theo would have been no closer to convincing him. When Tatum had made up his mind, there was no changing it. He’d been that way all his life. But maybe this time he was right. If Jack Swyteck couldn’t understand it, well, that’s the way it breaks, buddy. If Theo didn’t want to accept it, hey, that’s your choice, bro’. People didn’t think of Tatum Knight as a man of principle, but nobody knew him the way Theo did. And Theo knew exactly what was going on in his head. Two black guys, brothers-not soul brothers or gang brothers or You-Can-Share-My-Needle-for-a-Taste-of-Crystal-Meth brothers-but real brothers, brothers from the same womb, born of the same crackhead mother who’d gone out one night and gotten her throat slit by some asshole who didn’t think her blow job was worth the ten dollars. Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t have the same father (and they probably did, because they looked so much alike), but either way they’d never know who the hell he was. An alibi from these dead-end kids from Liberty City wasn’t good enough for Detective Rick Larsen and his lynch mob. They needed DNA-ironclad, scientific proof-positive of innocence, or his alibi didn’t mean shit. Well, fuck them, was all Tatum was saying. All of them.