James Grippando - Last to die

“I wish it hadn’t happened, but I can’t pretend it didn’t.”

“She tricked me. I slipped up.”

“It was the kind of slipup that could have landed our client in jail.”

“Which is apparently where he belongs.”

“Which is not at all the point.”

“I know. I made a mistake. I said I was sorry.”

Jack lowered his eyes and looked away. Kelsey stepped closer, cocking her head a little to catch his gaze. “Hey,” she said with a weak smile. “If you’re about to say ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry,’ I think I might strangle you.”

The way she was looking at him, he knew that honesty was the only option. “Kelsey, I-”

“Don’t,” she said.

“It’s important. All I’m trying to say is that for five years I was married to a woman who heard my every secret. Personal, professional-it didn’t matter. I trusted her completely, and we still fell apart. What chance does a relationship have when that trust is destroyed before we even get started?”

A woman passed on the sidewalk while walking her cocker spaniel. She nodded hello, tugged her dog away from Jack’s shoe, and kept walking.

Kelsey looked at Jack and said, “You really like her, don’t you?”

“Never saw her before.”

“I didn’t mean her. I meant Sally’s sister. Rene.”

Jack shrugged, not sure what to say.

Kelsey drew a deep breath, then let out what sounded like a sigh of resignation. “You’re a good guy, Jack. Frankly, I think this trust issue you’ve latched on to is an intellectual game you’re playing because you’re afraid to follow anything that doesn’t make intellectual sense. But you deserve to have what you want, even if you aren’t very good at figuring out why you really want it.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“I hope it works out for you.”

“Not sure there’s anything to it yet.”

“There will be.”

He gave her a quizzical look, wondering how it was that women saw things in other women that men couldn’t find with a microscope.

“I’ll still do my part to make your plan work. Whatever you and Theo need.” She reached out as if she were about to brush his cheek, then pulled back. “See you around, Jack.”

“Yeah. See you.”

He watched as she got into her car and started the engine. He offered a little wave as she drove off. Maybe she’d seen it, maybe she hadn’t. But the hole in his gut and the emptiness he felt wasn’t really about her. It wasn’t about Rene, either.

Damn, he said to himself. I’m really sorry, Nate.

Theo was in the mood for acting. This was not to be confused with his frequent cravings for action, which usually involved an ample supply of massage oil, edible panties, and glow-in-the-dark, double-extra-large condoms (when it came to Theo getting lucky, luck had nothing to do with it). Rather, he was preparing himself to act in the “I’d like to thank the Academy” sense of the word, as in displaying his skills as an actor.

You talkin’ to me?

Even without the cameras rolling, there was no truer form of art than turning a fraud like Tatum’s friend Javier into an honest glob of Jell-O.

“Can I come in?” asked Theo. He was standing on the front step. Javier was on the other side of the screen door, wearing only exercise shorts, no shirt. He looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, and sleeping past noon was probably pretty normal for a bouncer at a South Beach club. It was obvious that he’d done some serious weight lifting in his teens and early twenties, probably some steroids, too, but he was starting to turn that proverbial corner on the fast track to fatville. A thick gold chain hung around his neck, and Theo noticed that the skin on his pecs was red and irritated, like the guys at the gym who had their chest waxed for the girls who didn’t like hair.

Javier gave him a hard look, as if trying to figure out if he knew him. “You look an awful lot like my buddy Tatum. You must be his pain-in-the-ass little brother.”

“Theo’s the name. It’s time you and me talked.”

“What about?”

“Business.”

“What kind of business?”

“The kind you can’t do standing on the front porch.”

He gave a little smile, then let Theo in and led him back to the kitchen. Theo pulled up a bar stool as Javier cleared the counter of four big plastic jugs filled with powered protein and body-building supplements.

“Beer?” asked Javier.

“No, thanks. Already had breakfast.”

Theo did a quick scan of the apartment as Javier fetched himself a brew from the refrigerator. A new big-screen television dominated the room just off the kitchen. The rest of the furniture looked as though it had come with the dumpy apartment. If Javier was into anything illegal, he was either a small-time player or a high roller who hid success extremely well.

Javier popped open a beer for himself, then took a seat on the opposite side of the counter. “So, what’s up?”

“I’ve reconsidered Tatum’s offer.”

He drank from the can, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What offer?”

“Sally Fenning’s forty-six million.”

“What about it?”

He narrowed his eyes, ready to assess Javier’s reaction to his next line. “I’ve decided that I’m okay with a one-third cut.”

“Yeah,” he said, scoffing. “Who wouldn’t be?”

“So, you’re okay with it?”

He took another drink, then belched. “Okay with what, dude?”

“A three-way split instead of two-way?”

He smiled quizzically. “You know something I don’t know?”

Theo had come here feeling pretty confident about his bluff, but he was beginning to wonder if Javier really was his brother’s partner.

“You playing dumb on me, Javier?”

He chugged the rest of his beer and crushed the aluminum can in his fist. “Do I look like I’m playing dumb?”

No, thought Theo, and that was the problem. He looked just plain dumb, and it was throwing a crimp into Jack’s plan. The whole idea had been for Theo to come here bluffing, trying to find out if Sally’s bodyguard was indeed Tatum’s partner. But if their theory was correct, Theo should have been making more headway with this blockhead.

Unless he’s really playing it cool.

The telephone rang. “Hold your thought,” said Javier. He pitched his empty can into the trash and started across the kitchen.

Theo watched him reach for the phone, and he was suddenly uneasy about the way this plan of Jack’s was unfolding. What if Javier was just playing it cool? What if that was Tatum on the line, calling to tell him that Theo can’t be trusted-that Theo has to go?

He took another quick and dirty look around the room, his pulse quickening as his gaze settled on the assortment of kitchen knives in the butcher block beside the stove.

“Hello,” he heard Javier say into the telephone, and Theo wondered if the caller on the other end of the line was who he hoped it was, or who he feared it was.

The big question was what to do about Miguel Rios.

Jack hadn’t been bluffing entirely in that final exchange in his office, when he’d warned Tatum that Sally’s ex-husband would be the first to know about Tatum’s apparent “two-way split” with a partner who was likely as dangerous as he was mysterious. Implicit in the threat, however, was the assumption that Jack would first have to come around to the view that breaching the attorney-client privilege was the ethical and proper thing to do. That, of course, was a huge assumption. The issue wasn’t whether his client (or former client, it didn’t make any difference) had killed in the past. Jack could never reveal that information, not even if he had a sworn confession, not without being disbarred. The question was whether Tatum was going to kill again in the future. Unless Theo hit a home run in his meeting with Javier, Jack wasn’t anywhere near close enough to establishing that his client was about to commit another murder and that the life of an innocent person was in imminent danger. Certainly he didn’t have the level of proof required for a criminal defense lawyer to take the extraordinary step of betraying his own client’s confidences.