"You always did like my lemonade," said Flo.
"A woman of many talents," he said.
Jack tried his and seconded the compliment. "Cy tells me you two have known each other a long time."
"'Bout a hundred years," she said.
"You used to sing in the old jazz clubs, is that right?"
Cy cleared his throat, as if the subject was more complicated than the thumbnail he'd given Jack in the car ride over. "Flo and I were… used to…"
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Cyrus. Tell him the honest truth. You ruined my career."
"What?" he said.
She looked at Jack, her eyebrow arching. "We started datin', and honey, I didn't feel like singin' no blues."
They laughed, and Jack joined them, though he wasn't sure that he was supposed to be part of the joke. Cy drank more lemonade, then turned serious.
"Is the boy here?" he asked.
"In the bedroom," said Flo.
"He tell you anything more?"
"Won't talk. But I know he seen something. Maybe you can get it out of him." She rose and called to the next room. "Tyrone!"
It took a minute, but finally the door opened. A thirteen-year-old boy shuffled toward the table, dressed in an oversized Miami Hurricanes football jersey.
Flo returned to her seat and sat the boy down next to her. "This here is Theo Knight's uncle," she told him. "And his friend. Say hello."
"Hey" he said weakly.
"Tyrone's my grandson," she told Jack.
Jack said, "How's it goin', Tyrone?"
"Nice suit. You a cop?"
"Nope."
"Lawyer?"
Jack sensed that it was better to leave that question unanswered. "Theo's my best friend. We met at FSP."
"You were in prison? What'd you do, shave strokes off your golf handicap?"
Flo swatted him on the arm. "Show some respect."
Cy gave Jack a little kick under the table, as if to say, "Let me try."
"You ever heard of the Grove Lords, Tyrone?"
"Course I heard of' em. Ain't what they used to be, but they're still players."
"Both my nephews were Grove Lords back in the eighties.That's how Theo ended up on death row. Jack's the lawyer who got him off."
"Really?" he said, giving Jack another look. "Cool."
"No, it ain't cool," the old man said. "Theo wasted his best years in prison. His brother ended up dead. Their leader spent most of his life in jail and got shot and killed last week. And somebody just tried to kill Theo."
Tyrone didn't say anything.
Jack said, "We hear you might know something about that."
"You hear wrong."
"It happened right here on this street," said Uncle Cy. "Last Friday night."
Tyrone looked away then back. "I ain't talkin' to no cops."
"We aren't the cops," said Jack.
"No, but if I tell you, then we gotta go downtown and tell it to the cops. You know it, I know it, and that's bullshit!" he said, rising.
"Siddown," said Flo. She had him by the wrist. Tyrone was a big kid and could have easily shaken off the old woman. That he kept his cool and sank back into his chair was a credit to her and the way she'd raised him.
Tyrone folded his arms tightly across his chest. "I ain't talking to the police."
"I know this is tough," said Jack.
"You don't know nothin'," the boy said. "They'll blow my head off. Gram's too."
Jack had seen this many times before – a reluctant witness, a good person caught in a bad spot. Interrogators had many ways of dealing with it. The skill was in choosing the right strategy, especially with kids.
"Let's try this," said Jack. "You don't have to tell me anything, okay? I'm just going to start talking. If I got it right, you just sit there. If I got it wrong, you say 'honky.'"
The kid almost smiled. "Honky?"
Cy laughed through a sip of lemonade, nearly spraying it. "'Honky' kind of went out with 'groovy.'"
"Hey, it's my game, okay?" said Jack.
The boy kept his arms folded, but Jack felt as though he'd cut the tension, maybe even made a breakthrough.
"All right," said Tyrone, "start talking."
Jack glanced at Uncle Cy, who seemed okay with him taking the lead. "Your bedroom," said Jack. "I see it faces right out on the street. And I assume it's got a window."
Jack paused. Tyrone said nothing.
"You were in your room on Friday night. Alone."
More silence.
"Doing your homework."
"Honky."
"He was grounded," said Flo.
"Thanks," said Jack. "But let's keep this between me and Tyrone, okay?"
"Sorry," said Flo.
Jack said, "You were in your room Friday night. And I'm gonna say that about nine o'clock you heard a gunshot out on the street."
Tyrone didn't answer.
"And you looked out the window."
He shifted in his chair, but he said nothing.
"Then you looked over toward Second Avenue. There was a man down on the street. Another man running toward him."
Jack could see the boy swallow the lump in his throat. Tyrone was still in the game, but the tension had returned.
"A car was speeding away," said Jack. "You saw the car. It was red."
Tyrone lowered his eyes, but he didn't deny it.
"Now, you're really afraid of those guys in the red car. Because they're gangsters."
Still no denial.
"You got a look at them, and you recognized them."
"Honky."
The response almost made Jack laugh, but Tyrone's expression was deadly serious: Jack had it wrong.
"Okay," said Jack. "You recognized the car."
"Honky."
"You saw the car again, some other place, after the shooting."
"Honky."
Jack glanced at Cy, who simply shrugged. Jack pondered it, then said, "There was something about that red car. Something about it that told you it was gangsters."
Tyrone was silent.
Jack was definitely on the right track. "It was the wheels-"
"Honky."
"The bumpers or the paint job-"
"Honky honky."
"The windows."
No reply.
Jack thought about it for a moment, trying to envision something distinctive about the windows on gang-mobiles he'd seen around Miami." There was a gang symbol etched on the rear window."
More silence. Bull's-eye.
"Okay good. Now, I don't want you to tell me anything, Tyrone. But sometimes I like to doodle when I'm talking to people. Maybe you do, too. Helps relieve the nerves, you know?" Jack took a pen and a small notepad from inside his suit jacket and slid them across the table. "So I'm going to have more of your grandmother's delicious lemonade, and if you want to doodle, you go right ahead."
Jack drank his lemonade. Tyrone stared at the pen and notepad on the table. Finally, he took them. Jack watched as he inked an image onto the pad, but Tyrone's hand covered most of it. He finished in a few seconds and slid the pad back to Jack. Jack didn't examine it. He didn't study it. He didn't want to do anything to make Tyrone nervous. He simply retrieved his pad and pen and tucked them into his coat pocket.
Tyrone let out a sigh of relief.
Flo patted the back of her grandson's hand. "You done good, Tyrone. You didn't tell nobody nothin'."
"No," said Jack. "Not a thing."
Chapter 25
Jack drove Uncle Cy home, and they were in complete agreement: they would do everything possible to keep Flo's grandson out of the investigation, but Jack needed to talk with Andie Henning. A phone call wouldn't do – not if Jack was going to share the boy's drawing with her. Just picking a meeting spot, however, presented real difficulties.