James Grippando: Last Call

But he always overanalyzed things. Last month's draw had fallen short of what some lawyers paid their personal trainers. His ex-wife was a fruitcake, and his post-divorce love life could have filled an entire volume of Cupid's Rules of Love and War (Idiot's Edition). To add insult to injury, twice a week Abuela called Spanish talk radio to find her thirty-nine-year-old grandson "a nice Cuban girl." Sometimes Jack felt as if he had used up his lifetime allotment of luck getting Theo off death row for a murder he didn't commit – whose death warrant had been signed by the law-and-order governor of Florida, Jack's father.

And then there was Rene.

She lay on her side, sound asleep, the soft cotton sheet hugging the curve of her hip. Her flight from West Africa had landed that afternoon. She'd finally succumbed to jet lag, though not before taking Jack for a ride that seemed to have been propelled by rocket fuel. They had planned to hit South Beach for dinner. They never made it out of Jack's bedroom. Typical for her first night in town. Unfortunately she would be gone in two days, three at the most. Some emergency would undoubtedly come up and force her to cut the trip short. That would also be "typical."

The first time Jack had laid eyes on Rene, she was covered in dust, caught in the midst of the Senoufo country's equivalent of a sandstorm. It was hard not to be impressed by a Harvard Med School grad who had given up the financial rewards of private practice to be a one-doc operation in a clinic near the cocoa region of Cote d'lvoire. Many of her patients were young children escaping forced servitude on the plantations, mere innocents who had been snatched by kidnappers, lured away by liars, or sold into slavery by their own families for as little as fifteen dollars. Rene saw all that and more – malnutrition, AIDS, infant mortality, even genital mutilation among some migrant tribes. Perhaps it was a stretch, but Jack felt an immediate connection to Rene, having passed up offers himself from prestigious firms right out of law school to defend death-row inmates. For whatever reason, they hit it off. Really hit it off.

Passion, however, was a tricky thing. On the emotional EKG, Jack and Rene resembled a couple of flat-liners with occasional bursts of tachycardia. She flew into Miami to see him every three months or so. Sometimes she didn't even tell Jack she was coming. Smart, funny, sexy, and spontaneous, she could have been everything Jack thought he wanted in a woman – except that she was hardly ever around. On one of these visits she was going to put away the passport and announce that she was moving to Miami. At least that was what Jack told himself. A little optimism kept him in the game.

"Rene?" he whispered. She didn't move. He nudged her.

"What?" she muttered.

"Where's the remote?"

Only one eye opened, which was a good thing. A two-eyed glare of that caliber would have killed him, for sure. She swung her arm around and jabbed the remote control into Jack's elbow.

Jack punched the button, but nothing happened. "Damn it. How are you supposed to get this thing turned on?"

"Talk dirty to it," she said into her pillow.

"Thanks."

"Go to hell."

I love you, too , he started to say, but thought better of a joke like that. On her last visit, he'd used the three operative words in a serious way. Her response was not what he'd hoped for. It left him resolved never to say "I love you" again – unless followed by the word "too."

Waves of colored light flickered across the bedroom as Jack channel-surfed. He skipped through the reruns and infomercials, pausing only for a moment at yet another forensic drama that looked like CSI: Mars , or some such remote geographic rip-off of the original hit series. At the bottom of the hour, a local news headline caught his eye. He raised the volume. This time, it worked.

"No sound," said Rene.

"It's still on mute."

"Liar. I can hear it."

"That's because you're dreaming. In real life, I'm perfect. Only in dreams am I a total pain in the ass."

She was too tired to argue, or maybe it was his sense of humor that sent her back to sleep. Jack turned his attention to the television newscast. At such a low volume he could pick up only a few words here and there, but the image on screen was familiar. Jack had visited plenty of clients at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. A young and attractive reporter with ambition in her eyes and an Action News microphone in her hand was doing a live broadcast from outside the jail's main entrance. Helicopters circled in the night sky behind her, powerful white searchlights sweeping the landscape. Those definitely weren't media choppers.

The words "Breaking News" and "Prison Escape" flashed in white letters against a bright red banner on the bottom of the screen.

Jack glanced at Rene – still sleeping – and decided to risk a little added volume. With the press of a button, he immediately heard the excitement in the reporter's voice, catching her in mid-sentence.

"-the second escape from TGK Correctional Center in the past twelve months, and the first ever from the second floor, which is reserved for convicted or suspected sex offenders. TGK is operated by the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department, which countywide houses approximately seven thousand inmates in the nation's sixth-largest jail system. Last April, the department's director resigned after a police and fire task force found that jail buildings were severely outdated, officer training was poor, and 134 positions were unfilled. Department officials say that last night's escape occurred sometime after-"

The air conditioner kicked on, and the hum completely drowned out the television. Jack increased the volume a few bars too many, which had Rene grumbling.

"I'm going to kill you."

"You can't. Hippocratic oath, remember?"

"Sue me!" she said as she sprang to life like a lioness. A wrestling match ensued. Rene was on top, then Jack, then Rene. The sheets ended up on the floor, right beside the clothes that had fallen there four hours earlier. Jack was about to retake control of the situation when she grabbed him where it counted, the sparkle back in her eyes.

Jack froze, raising his hands in playful surrender. "Put the gun down, Rene. Unless you intend to use it."

She didn't let go. "I'm wide awake now, thanks to you. Come on. We have some serious catching up to do."

"Slow down. We've got all week."

She kissed him gently so lightly that it was difficult to tell whether she'd actually made contact – a kind of sensual ambiguity that Rene had perfected and that could drive Jack crazy Her lips drifted toward his ear as she whispered, "I have to fly back to Abidjan on Monday"

This time, her words barely tugged at his heartstrings. "It's okay" he said flatly "I knew you did."

IT WAS LAST CALL at Sparky's Tavern.

Theo Knight made the announcement from behind the long, crowded bar. He was smiling widely, and with good reason. Sparky's was an old gas station that he'd converted into the last watering hole between the mainland and the Florida Keys. It was a true dive, but it was his dive. And business was better than ever. At this rate, it wouldn't be long before he could say good-bye to the bikers, the rednecks, and the electric slide and open Sparky's II, a true jazz bar in Coconut Grove. The mere thought blew his mind. Talk about beating the odds.

Theo had never actually made it into the Grove Lords – stealing his own mother's purse didn't cut it – but life didn't offer many choices to the illegitimate son of a drug-addicted prostitute. The cops never did catch the guy who'd slit his mother's throat. The word on the street was that it was "some John who didn't think her blow job was worth the ten bucks." Theo and his older brother went to live with their mother's sister in Liberty City, one of Miami 's roughest hardscrabble neighborhoods. Aunt Teesha did her best to raise them, but with five children of her own, it wasn't easy. The Knight brothers were soon on every crime-watch list in the area, thanks mostly to Tatum, but Theo did his part too. He dropped out of high school, stuck his hand in the wrong cash register, and got tagged with the brutal murder of a convenience store clerk. At age fifteen he was the youngest inmate on Florida 's death row. The Grove Lords finally thought he rocked. Theo didn't find the irony amusing.