James Grippando - Last Call

Behind him, in the kitchen, the California door slid open. Rene stuck her head inside and called to him from the other side of the house. "Are you almost ready?"

"I'll be right there."

Rene turned and walked toward the dock behind the house, but she left the sliding door open. Jack looked at Andie and said, "Anything else?"

"No. You go ahead. I think we're done."

We're done . The awkward choice of words registered on his face as well as hers.

"Okay I'll see you" he said.

"See ya." For a moment she seemed to wonder if they should shake hands. They didn't. She just thanked him the way she would have thanked any witness for his time and headed for her car.

He called to her as she reached his driveway.

She stopped. "Yeah?"

"Take care of yourself, all right?" he said.

She shrugged, gave a halfhearted smile, and said, "You know I will."

Jack watched as she opened the car door. "Hey, Andie," he said before she could climb behind the wheel.

"What?"

Jack paused, summoning the right tone of voice. "If you're thinking about talking to Theo, don't. He has a lawyer."

Andie didn't answer, but she seemed to understand that it wasn't anything personal – that Jack was simply tired of the cops harassing his friend, and that Theo deserved better. She got in her car and drove away.

Jack shut the door and leaned against it, thinking for moment, and finally chastising himself for thinking way too much. Stop over-analyzing everything, already

He grabbed the boat keys from the kitchen counter and went to find Rene, curious to know which CDs she'd chosen – and wondering if, by chance, she had chosen his and Andie's favorite.

UNCLE CY FELT LIKE he owned the place.

It sounded like an oxymoron, but Theo said he had "personal business" in the upper Keys, so he left: his uncle in charge of Sparky's Tavern until his return. Cy was all over the chance to live out this fantasy – even if the bikers and rednecks did outnumber the brothas and jazz lovers by about fifty to one.

"Hey Lenny" said Cy. "Can you replace the number two keg for me?"

Theo's assistant was at the other end of the bar, setting up for the Saturday night crowd. If the rum he was stocking was 80 proof, it posted a bigger number than Lenny's IQ. "Sure thing, boss."

Boss . The very ring of it made the old man smile.

The day had been absolutely perfect Just him and Theo, the old sax and the new sax. They'd made it to only one of the old bars Cy had played in his youth – Tobacco Road, which Theo also played on occasion – but they vowed to hit all of his old spots eventually, one at a time, a regular outing. More important, they also agreed that the vacant restaurant with the U-shaped bar was the spot for Sparky's II. He sure hoped Theo could nail it down. Hell, was there really anything to worry about? This was Theo Knight, his nephew, a punk from the ghetto who'd survived death row and then named his first bar Sparky's – a double-barreled flip of the bird to Florida's old electric chair, nicknamed "Old Sparky" Theo often said that his uncle was his hero. In truth, Theo was Cy's hero.

"Lenny, the keg, please."

Cyrus Knight didn't have many perfect days in his life story. At least not that he remembered. The culprit was drugs. From the very beginning, friends had begged him not to let customers buy him drinks. Take the tips in cash, they warned him, not liquor. But it seemed rude to refuse a gin-and-tonic from a good-natured guy who swears you're the next Charlie Parker. So he drank. All night. While he played. On his breaks. After his gig. He drank before he went to bed at 5 a.m., and he drank some more when he woke the following afternoon. Before he knew it, he'd burned through the best years of his life as a full-blown alcoholic. Then a pothead. Then a coke fiend. And it only got worse. His arms still bore traces of the track marks to prove it.

It was no wonder that he threatened to kill Theo if ever he caught him drinking when he played.

"Lenny! The keg already"

"I'm getting to it, boss."

Nice kid, but he had the work ethic of a sloth. "Hell, I'll do it myself."

Cy untapped the spent keg first. As he rose from his crouch, however, a sudden wave of nausea sent the room spinning. He leaned on the edge of the sink behind the bar to support his weight. It would pass in a minute, for sure. He was actually getting used to these spells. Damn blood pressure medicine didn't agree with him one bit.

Getting old sucks.

He splashed cold water on his face and breathed in and out, slowly and deeply. Better already. He drew a breath and headed toward the stockroom.

Lenny looked up from behind the cash register. "Boss, I said I'd get it."

"Right. Just like the check's in her mouth, and I won't come in the mail."

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

He found a handcart near the door, but it was plain to see that the full-sized keg was beyond his strength. He went behind the tower of stacked kegs in search of a pony keg, something more his size. There he found just about everything except what he was looking for. He saw plastic bags filled with trash that needed to be taken out and dozens of crushed boxes. There were cans of beer that had broken loose from the twenty-four-pack, an assortment of liquor bottles, and some empty cigarette packages. He spotted several broken cocktail glasses, a cockroach or two, a rat trap.

And an orange jumpsuit.

He stooped down and tugged at the hem, pulling the garment toward him slowly his heart thumping, though deep inside he already knew what it was. The name and number printed on the left breast pocket confirmed his fears.

REEMS 007516.

The nausea was back, but it had nothing to do with the medication. All perfect days had to end. This one had just ended a little sooner than he thought it would.

Damn it, Theo. Damn it all to hell, boy.

Isaac Reems needed a girlfriend.

He'd studied other prison breaks as part of his months-long preparation, mostly by trading stories with inmates. There was no single formula for success. But the smart guys always had a girlfriend – it was never a wife – waiting on the outside to help them evade law enforcement and melt back into society. With the girlfriend came a fast car, plenty of cash, new clothes, disguises, phony identification, guns and ammunition, food and liquor, a place to hide, and – chicks just dig fugitives – great sex galore. But Isaac figured out a way to get all he needed without a woman, and so long as he had money, even the pussy would follow.

Eighteen hours on the run proved him dead wrong. Sad to say, but in situations like these, girlfriends were the only friends a man could count on.

Thanks for nothing brothas.

Isaac was laying flat on a hard tile floor, staring up at the kitchen ceiling. He'd actually dozed off, probably hadn't moved in at least two hours. A realtor's for sale sign posted in the yard had lured him inside. The modest house, a three-bedroom, two-bath concrete shoebox in a middle-class neighborhood, was completely empty, not a stick of furniture anywhere. The reduced sign out front suggested that the owners had packed up their belongings long ago and moved everything to their new house. It took Isaac all of three minutes to bypass the cheap home alarm system, and the lock on the back door had been mere child's play for the former leader of the Grove Lords. Hard to imagine a more opportune hideout for a dude with no girlfriend.

Isaac pushed himself up from the floor and noticed that his back was stiff. He'd been hitting the prison gym hard for several weeks before his breakout, trying to get himself into top condition. Still, his thirty-five-year-old body wasn't quite ready for that jump out of a second-story window at the Turner Guilford Knight Corrections Center and the scramble over the nine-foot perimeter fence. Things should have gotten easier after those hurdles, and he probably wouldn't have felt so sore now if the escape had gone according to plan. Deals of all sorts could be cut from inside prison walls, and Isaac had lined up the big items before making his break. A set of wheels with the keys in the glove compartment and a change of clothes in the trunk was supposed to be waiting for him in the parking lot at the 7-Eleven. His new pants were promised with two hundred bucks, small bills, in the pocket.