His refusal to answer seemed only to feed the growing frenzy. The questions kept coming, dozens at a time, each one somewhere between a bark and an angry shout.
“What’s his name?
“What will he say?”
“Will he defect?”
“Es usted comunista?
Jack shot a look-Am I a communist?-and the camera flashed in his face. That last question had been purely a plant, designed to get him to look at the camera. It was like trying to wade through the muck of the Everglades, but Jack was slowly making his way down the steps, and the media went with him. Someone had taken hold of his jacket to keep him from moving too fast. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Sofia several steps behind, well within the mob’s nucleus. Finally, they reached the sidewalk, and with one last surge they pushed beyond the curb and squeezed into the backseat of a cab. Jack went first. Sofia jumped in after him, slamming the door behind her.
“ Coral Gables,” Jack told the driver.
The many faces of the media were sliding across the passenger-side windows as the car pulled away. Sofia brushed her tangled hair out of her eyes. Jack straightened his jacket. It was as if they’d run through the gauntlet.
“No media backlash, huh?” said Jack as the car started down Miami Avenue.
“It’ll blow over,” said Sofia in a breathless voice.
“Yeah, sure.” In about a hundred years.
24
CASTRO’S PAWNS?” That was the banner headline for the Latin evening news.
It was an ingenious cover-your-ass tactic that the libel defense bar had concocted, this badly abused practice of disparaging the hell out of someone and then disclaiming all liability by putting a simple question mark after the attack.
“Castro’s Pawns?”
“Drug Addict?”
“Toe-Sucking, Panty-Sniffing Loser Who Actually Dials the Phone Numbers in Men’s Room Stalls?”
Thankfully the nonsense had stopped at “Castro’s Pawns,” which was bad enough. Much of it rolled off Jack’s back, especially the attacks from an extreme journalist who would assail Jack’s Cuban witness this week, and then next week call for a ban on nursery rhymes that promoted homosexual lifestyles. (Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub.) Whatever the source, he didn’t want to be home when the phone started to ring off the hook with calls from the media. Nor did he want Abuela to die of embarrassment when she turned on the evening news. So he watched at his grandmother’s town house, poised for on-the-spot damage control.
“Dios mio!” she said, groaning.
“I’m sorry,” said Jack.
“I no mad with you,” she said, her emotions fraying her command of English. “I mad with them. A Cuban soldier for witness? Es loco.”
Jack didn’t say anything. It did seem like a long shot, but he wasn’t quite ready to dismiss as “crazy” the idea of a Cuban soldier coming forward to testify in his case.
“Look,” said Abuela as she pointed to the television. “Is Señor Pintado.”
The judge had issued a gag order, so Jack’s first reaction was that the station was broadcasting file footage. But it wasn’t. Alejandro was making a statement from his home. He and his wife were standing on the inside of the tall iron gate at the entrance to his walled estate. Various members of the media had gathered on the other side, their ranks spilling across the sidewalk and into the residential street. Pintado silenced them with a wave of his hand. Then he looked into the camera and addressed the television audience in his native tongue.
“I say this to Cuban Americans, to the people of Cuba, to the whole world. Fidel Castro will regret the day that he sends one of his soldiers into a Miami courtroom to defend the woman who murdered my son.”
“Good for you,” said Abuela.
Oh, boy, thought Jack.
Pintado thanked the crowd, then kissed his wife and started back toward the house. The newscaster gave a quick recap of what had just happened, repeating over and over again what Pintado had just said, analyzing it to death, proving that Hispanic news was, in this respect, no different than traditional network journalism. The more Jack thought about what he’d just seen, however, the more the day’s events were beginning to make sense to him. The U.S. attorney may well be a close friend of his father’s, but Jack wasn’t about to be pushed around for the entire trial. He stepped out of the room, away from Abuela, then picked up the phone and dialed Torres at home.
“Hector, it’s Jack Swyteck here.”
“What can I do for you, son?”
“I’m not your son, and what you can do for me is explain that little stunt I just watched Mr. Pintado pull off on television.”
“Stunt? Whatever do you mean?”
“The judge issued a gag order. No one is supposed to be talking about the possibility of a Cuban soldier testifying on my client’s behalf.”
“Oh, lighten up, please. Gag order or not, you surely aren’t going to ask the judge to hold a grieving father in contempt for a one-sentence defense of his dead son.”
“That’s exactly what you were banking on, isn’t it?” said Jack.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cut the crap, Hector. I know your reputation. You choreograph everything. Alejandro Pintado isn’t saying anything to the media without your prior blessing.”
“Are you accusing me of circumventing the court’s gag order?”
That was exactly what Jack was doing, and ten years earlier, the old Jack Swyteck would have crawled through the phone line and spit right in the prosecutor’s eye. But experience had taught him to take a less accusatory approach. “Let me just say this. I found it quite surprising that the media was all over this story before any of us had even left the courtroom this afternoon. After all, my motion had been filed under seal. The only people who knew anything about the Cuban soldier were me, Sofia, the judge, and your office.”
“And the clerk’s office, of course. You know how careless those civil servants can be.”
“Yeah,” Jack said with sarcasm. “I’m sure it was the clerk’s office that leaked it.”
“Or maybe it was Castro who leaked it. Did you ever think of that, Jack? After all, you are his pawn.”
“ ‘Castro’s pawn.’ Interesting choice of words. Did you take them from the evening news, or did you also write the news script?”
“My dinner’s getting cold. It’s been nice chatting with you, Jack.”
“Sure. I’m glad we cleared this up. At least now I know what I’m up against.”
They exchanged a clipped good-night, and Jack hung up and returned to the television.
Abuela was still on the couch, riveted by the newscast. The coverage on Pintado was finally wrapping up, and the anchorman yielded to a meteorologist who looked like a high school intern from fashion school. Jack switched off the set. Abuela continued to stare at the blackened screen, as if not quite believing what she’d just watched.
“Are you okay?” asked Jack.
Her lips quivered ever so slightly. “I wish Señor Pintado had said something in your defense.”
“In my defense? I’m not on trial.”
“Is just that…my friends. What do I tell them?”
“No Castro, no problem?”
“You think this is joke? Many peoples will ask me questions. What do I say?”
“Tell them that your grandson is doing his job. And it’s going just fine.”
She sat up straight, as if searching for the fortitude to ask the next question. “Are you talking with the Cuban government?”
“Abuela, that’s privileged information. It’s between me and my client.”
“That sounds like ‘yes’ to me.”
“It’s not a yes. I just can’t talk about it with you.”
“There’s nothing you cannot talk about with your abuela.”
“Believe me, there are certain things-” He stopped. Abuela was giving him one of her patented looks, and Jack was suddenly struck with an idea. “There’s nothing we can’t talk about, you say?”