"It's as easy as stealing cable TV. For fifty bucks, you could hire half the people who walk into my bar to do it in ten minutes."
His uncle stepped closer and looked Theo straight in the eye. He didn't look angry. He looked hurt. "I didn't tap my nephew's phone." He shook his head and walked away.
Theo wanted to call out and stop him, but he was momentarily frozen. It was as if the weight of his own stupidity suddenly came down upon him, crushing his heart as completely as the interstate had crushed Overtown.
"Cy, wait," he said, but he wasn't sure his voice could be heard.
THAT SAME METALLIC red low-rider was cruising down the street again, the boom box blaring.
Cy kept walking. He went right past Theo's car.
Theo called louder. "Where you going?"
He turned around. Now he did look angry. "I'm gettin' myself a cab."
Theo drew a deep breath and let it out. He knew it wouldn't do any good to chase after him, but he wasn't about to let his uncle take a cab home. He watched, hoping the old man would decide on his own to turn around and come back. But he was a block away and showing no sign of slowing down.
"Uncle Cy!" Theo shouted, but the boom box from the passing car was too loud. No way the old man could have heard him. Theo started after him, half walking, half jogging. He was about to call out his name again, but that damn box was blasting even louder.
It was as if the low-rider was keeping pace with him.
Theo stopped and wheeled toward the street. The passenger-side window was half-open, but from Theo's angle it was too dark to see inside the vehicle. "Hey, what the hell-"
The crack of gunfire ended his sentence, and his dive for cover came way too late. He was suddenly down on the sidewalk, his head throbbing like he'd been hit with a sledgehammer. Theo tried to get up but couldn't. Something hot was running down his face and neck, but, strangely, the sidewalk beneath him was turning cold.
"Nailed him!" the gunman shouted, and then Theo heard the low-rider burn rubber and speed away into the night.
Uncle Cyrus, he tried to shout, but he couldn't find his voice.
He wanted to wipe the blood from his eyes, but his hands wouldn't move. His vision was a blur, and he suddenly noticed the glow of a street lamp. The lighting, however, was no longer diffused. It was intensely bright in the middle, like a blazing star in the dead of night. Lasers of equally brilliant light shot out from the center at twelve and six o'clock, also at three and nine. Or was it north and south, east and west? There seemed to be a strange confluence of light, time, and direction.
He heard his uncle shout his name, but it didn't sound real.
Then came darkness.
Chapter 18
Jack took the call from Uncle Cy and picked up Trina on the way. Just after 9:00 p.m., they rushed to the emergency room at Jackson Memorial, a public hospital that was a mere hop over the interstate from Overtown and no stranger to gunshot victims. Cy was slumped in a chair in the crowded waiting room. Trina went directly to him and hugged him tightly for support. He was too emotionally drained to stand.
"How's Theo?" said Jack, breathless.
Trina wiped away a tear as she and Uncle Cy broke their embrace.
"Don't know," the old man said. "They threw me outta the ER so they could work on him."
"Did he regain consciousness?"
"Uh-uh. Not that I saw"
"How did he look when they brought him in?"
Cy's expression was less than hopeful. "Like he been shot in the head. Just so much damn blood."
Jack's gaze swept the waiting room. It was a cross-section of lower-income Miami. An old Haitian woman hung her head into a big plastic bucket that reeked of vomit. A homeless man with no legs slept in the wheelchair beside her. A single mother comforted a crying baby as her four other children played leapfrog on the floor, shouting at one another in Spanish. A drug addict in withdrawal paced back and forth across the waiting room, talking to himself. This was the world of Medicaid and no health insurance. Anything less than a bullet to the head meant a nine-hour wait. Free treatment from some of the best doctors in the world was their consolation.
The whiteboard behind the receptionist showed that Theo Knight was in treatment room number three. Jack approached the counter and snagged the attention of one of the busy nurses. "Any information on my friend in room three?"
She didn't look up from her clipboard. It might have seemed rude, had she not been doing ten things at once. "What's his name?"
Jack told her. She checked the board, grabbed an eraser, and removed his name – which gave Jack a moment of panic.
"They took him into surgery," she said. "We'll let his uncle know as soon as we know anything."
Jack went to the vending machine and bought three bottled waters. Trina remained at Uncle Cy's side, and she was holding his hand when Jack returned. Jack shared the waters and the latest news from the nurse. Through the glass entrance doors, he noticed a City of Miami squad car in the parking lot.
"Did you talk to the police yet?" he asked Cy
He nodded.
"What did you tell them?" said Jack.
"Not much. Didn't really see the shooter. Black guy is all I can say. Red ghetto car. Drive-by shooting, you know."
Trina rose, clearly edgy. "I need to walk off some nerves," she said, then headed aimlessly toward the whiteboard, as if to confirm everything Jack had just learned from the nurse.
Jack stayed with Uncle Cy. "So you see the shooting as random?"
He shook his head. "Did at first. More I think about it, more it seems like somebody from the 'hood. Maybe even an old Grove Lord. Must've gotten wind that Isaac turned to Theo for help and Theo went to the cops. This is payback."
"I could see how you might think that way," said Jack. He drank from his water bottle.
"You say that like I'm missin' somethin'."
Jack took a seat directly across from Cy, then slid forward to the edge of his chair. He lowered his voice to further convey how serious he was. "I agree that it wasn't random. But your payback theory doesn't make any sense."
"Why not?"
"If someone from the old 'hood was ticked off enough to punish Theo for not helping Isaac and for calling the cops, why didn't Isaac go to that person for help in the first place?"
Cy nodded, as if he hadn't thought of that. "So it ain't payback?"
Jack said, "I think it's bigger than that. Much bigger."
A glimmer of life returned to the old man's eyes. "Talk to me."
ANDIE HENNING WAS IN Suite 212 at Jackson Memorial Hospital, a private room for Sylvia Peters, the young waitress abducted by Isaac Reems.
Andie had been waiting since Sunday morning to speak with her. Kidnapping was Andie's primary area of responsibility at the FBI's Miami field office. Also, it was possible that Reems had told his hostage something about the prison break, so talking to Sylvia was a key part of Andie's task force review of the escape. Sylvia's parents, however, had refused all requests for interviews until their daughter regained her strength and spoke to a counselor. With Reems dead and the criminal investigation in a postmortem posture, Andie hadn't pushed it. But upon hearing that Theo had been shot, Andie renewed her request with urgency. Sylvia agreed to talk.
Andie stood at the bedrail facing Sylvia. IV fluids dripped into the patient's arm. Sylvia's parents sat in the chairs by the window, monitoring their daughter's words as closely as the bedside equipment monitored her heart rate. Andie took notes and listened to Sylvia's recount of the abduction, asking questions to fill in details. When Sylvia got to the shooting behind the restaurant, Andie slowed the discussion to the interrogator's equivalent of frame-by-frame analysis.
"I blacked out somewhere during the car ride," said Sylvia. "It was ungodly hot in that trunk."
"And you regained consciousness when?"
"I have no idea how much time passed. All I know is that the car wasn't moving anymore. I remember hearing a loud thud. I think it was the sound of the trunk slamming shut."