"Then you need to hire a retired agent."
"And if I start looking right now, how long after Uncle Cy's dead do you think I'll find the right one?"
She looked away, obviously uncomfortable with the way he'd put it. Jack had struck a nerve.
Andie said, "I'll talk it out with you, okay?"
"Okay," he said with a thin but appreciative smile.
"What do you know so far?"
"Theo's on a mission to find the man who raped his mother. He's convinced it's the same guy Isaac Reems blackmailed to help him escape from jail, it's the same guy who tried to kill Theo after Reems escaped, and it's now the same guy who kidnapped his uncle. He loaded up a pistol and gave Reddens name to Trina before going out tonight. She was supposed to give it to me if something bad happened."
"Do you think Redden was the rapist in that frat film?"
"I think he was more than that” Jack said, as he took a computer-printed copy of a newspaper article from his pocket and laid it on the table. "I went online into the Tribune archives before I called you. This is from 1986, about a month before Theo's mother was killed. Fernando Redden was on the front page of the business section. He won the chamber of commerce award for Miami businessman of the year."
Andie gave the article a quick review. "Could Theo's mother have possibly known about this? She wasn't exactly the type to read the business section of the newspaper."
"I'm sure there was TV coverage, too. She could have seen that."
"Are you suggesting that she saw what an upstanding citizen Redden had become and tried to blackmail him about the rape?"
"That's one possibility. But I'm betting that after thirteen years, she saw the face of her attacker on television, she hated the cards life had dealt her, and she simply decided to do something about it."
"She decided to report the assault to the police?"
"Or at least go public with it," said Jack. "And a guy like Fernando Redden wasn't about to stand for that."
Andie retreated into thought.
Jack gave her a minute. "So, what's your take?"
"I think you may be right," she said, her expression turning very serious. "And I'm afraid Theo is walking straight into a whole mess of trouble."
Chapter 46
Uncle Cy didn't know where they were headed. He didn't know what was going to happen to him. He only knew that he had to pee, which meant that it had to be around midnight. Every night, his aging bladder sent the same signal at the same time. He could have set his watch by it, except that he didn't have a watch. Didn't have a wallet or cell phone either. Not anymore. Cy had surrendered all those things at gunpoint before climbing into the trunk of Jack's car.
The ride was far from comfortable. It was hot, pitch dark, and he was having a tough time breathing. Height ran in the Knight gene pool, but flexibility didn't, which made for a tight fit. The spare tire butted up against his back. Jack's golf bag stole a good chunk of his legroom. His head was propped against the wheel well, and the whine of rubber tires on asphalt was almost loud enough to drown out his thoughts. Almost. Danger pushed the mind in strange directions, and it occurred to him that it had been a while since he'd stared down the barrel of a gun. The first time was a holdup, when he was just nineteen. The last time was during the Overtown riots in 1982. There was one other brush with a Saturday-night special, but he'd been too drunk to take it seriously. Never before, however, had anyone put a gun with a silencer to his head. That changed the equation.
Silencers were for real killers, not amateurs.
Cy felt the car slow and make a hard right turn. The hum of the highway gave way to the crunch and pop of a gravel road. A pothole rattled his bones. Finally, the car came to a stop, the engine shut off, and there was silence.
Cy heard the drivers door open and shut. The jangle of car keys and shuffling of footsteps told him that someone was approaching. Cy braced himself, expecting to hear the key in the trunks lock. Instead, he heard a man s voice. He couldn't make out what was being said, but it was growing louder as the man came closer. It didn't sound like the street dialect of the driver, a black guy who'd ordered him to shut his face and get in the trunk. This voice belonged to someone else. Cy was still waiting for the trunk to pop open when, instead, the entire rear end of the car seemed to sink a good six inches. Someone was sitting on the bumper.
"Change of plans," the driver said. He probably thought Cy couldn't overhear their conversation, or maybe he just didn't care. Either way, every word was audible.
"What happened?" the other man said.
"Had Knight all to myself at his new bar. Then, in walked his lawyer and his uncle before I could do the hit."
"Did anyone know you were there?"
Cy wasn't sure, but the other guy sounded white.
"Well, yeah," said the black guy "I mean, I shot his cell off the bar before his uncle showed up."
The anger in the white man's voice was discernible even through the trunk lid. "So you were playing with him. Is that what you're telling me?"
"A little, yeah. Just enough to keep it interesting."
"Damn it! We agreed to a hit, clean and quick. Just like Reems."
The words hit Cy like an epiphany. Theo had been right: he and Isaac Reems had been in the same man's sights.
The driver said, "Then you should have hired the same guy who hit Reems."
"Then you shouldn't have offered to do it for free."
"Cool down, all right?" said the driver.
"No, I can't cool down. You screwed up the Knight hit twice. At least the first time it had the markings of a random killing, just another drive-by gang shooting gone bad. But this time you definitely went and tipped off Knight to the fact that there's a contract on his head. If he's smart, he's in hiding. It could take weeks, maybe months, for us to get another shot at him."
"Got that problem solved, my man."
"Is that so?"
The driver slapped the trunk lid, and to Cy it sounded as if he were trapped inside a bass drum. "Got his uncle right in here."
"What the hell for? I got no interest in ransom."
"Listen to me."
"No, you listen. All I want is to shut Knight up before he starts blabbering about his mother. We have to assume he knows at least as much as Reems knew. I tried to buy Reems's silence, even paid off that guard to help him skip jail. In the end, Reems had to go. So does his buddy Theo. Period."
"Got it covered, dude. Like you said: Theo probably went into hiding. Which means we gotta lure him out into the open." How?
"Like any fisherman will tell ya, ain't nothin' like live bait." Again he tapped the trunk lid, two quick beats on the metal drum. "And we sot all the bait we need."
JACK AND ANDIE PARKED beneath a street lamp in the Coconut Grove ghetto. It was after midnight, but some middle-school kids were still out on the street, jumping the curb on bicycles. A homeless guy was asleep or passed out on the sidewalk. The beat of rap music blared from a pair of giant speakers as a group of gangsters rolled past in their lime-green low-rider.
"I'll wait here," said Andie.
Jack couldn't think of another woman he would leave alone in this neighborhood. He got out of her car, stepped onto the sidewalk, and walked toward the restaurant that had once been Homeboy's Tavern.
He probably could have guessed where Theo had gone, but the Lojack system on Theo's car told him what they needed to know. Law enforcement could access the GPS tracking system, so involving Andie had paid its first dividend.
Jack spotted Theo's car first, and then he saw Theo. He was alone, sitting on a bus bench and staring into the street with unusual intensity. It was as if the chalk line of his mother's body were still there, an unsolved homicide.
A westerly breeze carried a hint of smoke, typical of the late spring fires in the Everglades. The night was far from cool, however, and Theo had to be sweating in his leather jacket. Jack knew why he was wearing it. Trina had told him about the gun.