He snatched up the telephone, hoping to hear Cindy’s voice. For a few moments, though, all he heard was silence. Finally, a surly voice came over the line. “Swyteck?” it asked.
Jack didn’t move. The voice seemed vaguely familiar, but it also seemed raspy and disguised. He waited. And finally came the brief, sobering message.
“A killer is on the loose tonight, Swyteck. A killer is on the loose.”
Jack gripped the receiver tighter. “Who’s there?”
Again, there was only silence.
“Who’s there? Who are you?” Jack waited, but heard only the sound of his own erratic breathing. Then, finally. .
“Sleep tight,” was the cool reply. The phone clicked, and then came the dial tone.
Chapter 5
Governor Harold Swyteck jogged down a wood-chip jogging path. He muttered a soft curse as he reflected on the political repercussions of Jack’s victory the previous day. The governor and his advisers had been speculating for weeks on how the trial might affect his bid for re-election. They figured a few tough anti-crime speeches would probably counter Jack’s involvement. Never, however, had they figured he’d actually win an acquittal. Had they considered it, they might have had a comeback when the media issued its hourly reports that it was indeed the governor’s son who’d gotten a confessed killer off on a technicality.
“Damn it all!” Harry blurted with another husky breath, his arms pumping to a quicker cadence. As his legs surged forward he felt his anger building. It was a father’s anger, tinged more with disappointment than with vitriol.
The governor struggled to maintain his pace. Since the Fernandez execution, he’d taken up jogging and sworn off the booze. In some twelve hundred days in office, he’d jogged about as many miles and thought about that one disturbing night at least as many times, wishing he’d just listened to his son and stopped the execution-if only for a few days, long enough to investigate Jack’s story. Jogging gave him a chance to reflect on events and feelings without yielding to the urge to confide. His advisers pleaded with him about security, but he avoided escorts, except late at night or in big cities. “If some crazy is gunning for me,” he’d always say, “he won’t come looking on a back road for some guy in frumpy jogging sweats and a baseball cap.” So far, he’d been right.
Harry slowed as he neared a cluster of sprawling oak trees and royal poincianas that marked the halfway point of his route. He reminded himself of the rules: The first half of his run was for venting anger; the second was reserved for positive thoughts.
“My fellow Floridians,” he silently intoned as he reached his halfway marker, jogging beneath the fire-orange canopy of a royal poinciana. He could feel his attitude changing. His troubles were falling behind him; this morning’s speech and throngs of loyal supporters were looming ahead. In just a few hours he would officially launch his re-election campaign.
“. . in this election, you have a choice,” the speech continued in his mind. But his feet went out from under him, and he found himself sprawled on the ground, his right elbow and knee skinned and bleeding. At first he thought he’d tripped over something, but as he looked behind him a dark blur raced out from the shadow of a huge cold oak and pounced on top of him, knocking him flat again. Their bodies locked together as they tumbled down a steep ravine along the deserted jogging path. They landed hard amid the tangled weeds and cattails beside a scummy green canal. The governor quickly reached in his pocket for his electronic pager to alert security, but before his finger could hit the red button, his attacker knocked the wind out of him with a fist to the solar plexus. In a split second, Harry was flat on his belly, his face pushed into the dirt.
“Heh!” the governor gasped, his head moving just enough to the side to allow his mouth to work. But a cold steel blade was at his throat before he could utter another word.
“Don’t move,” the man ordered.
Harry froze, his body trembling as he forced himself to remain face down and perfectly still. His right cheek was pressed to the ground, but out of the corner of his left eye he could see a bruiser of a body sitting on his kidneys. Its sheer weight nearly prevented him from breathing, let alone moving. It was a man, he presumed. The voice was deep; the hands covered by black 1eather gloves were very large. The features, however, were indiscernible. He wore camouflaged marine fatigues, and his face was covered by a ski mask.
“Well, what do we have here,” the man taunted in a thick, raspy voice. “Mr. Big-Time Politician out for his morning jog.”
The governor clenched his fists, not to defend himself but to bring his fear under control. All was silent, except for a sucking sound the man made when he breathed. He must have been drooling from the wads of cotton or whatever he had in his mouth to disguise his voice.
“Hey, Governor,” the attacker said, mocking him now with a friendly tone. “I hear you politicians like to deal. Well, here’s one for you, my man. How about I give you proof that Raul Fernandez was innocent?”
Raul Fernandez? Harry started at the name. His mind ran in a dozen different directions, trying to make sense of why that name was being dredged up now.
“And in exchange for me being such a stand-up guy,” the attacker continued, “for saving this big-time job of yours by not letting it slip that you and Junior killed an innocent man, you give me some money. A shitload of it.”
The governor remained silent.
The man squeezed the back of Harry’s neck, as if the knife were not already commanding enough attention. “Or maybe you prefer I just have a conversation with the newspapers.”
The governor forced himself to put his fear aside long enough to ask a question. “What do you want from me?”
“There’s a drugstore at the corner of Tenth and Monroe-Albert’s. Be at the pay phone out front. Noon, Thursday. Alone. And don’t even think about calling the cops. If you do, I go right to the newspapers. You hear what I’m saying?”
The governor swallowed hard. “Yes,” he replied.
The man pushed the governor’s face into the ground and sprung to his feet. “Before you even twitch a finger, count to a hundred, out loud, nice and slow. Now.”
“One, two,” Harry counted off, listening carefully as the man’s footsteps faded into the distance. He lay still until he reached thirty, when he figured it was safe to move. Then he quickly rolled over and snatched the transmitter from his pocket. If he pushed the red button, security would be there in less than a minute. But he hesitated. What would he tell them? That some thug had threatened to reveal he’d executed an innocent man?
He tucked the transmitter into his pocket, still thinking. His attacker had warned him: Alert security and the Fernandez story goes straight to the media. Would that really be so disastrous? No question, it would be bad, but inside he felt an even deeper fear. That the attacker wouldn’t go to the newspapers. That if he didn’t show up at Albert’s, he’d never hear from the man again. And he’d never know the truth about Fernandez.
He cast a forlorn look over the weeds, toward the thick woods where his attacker had disappeared. Tenth and Monroe was a crowded intersection-a very public and safe place. It wasn’t like a face-to-face meeting in a dark alley. Hell, if the guy’d wanted to kill him, he’d be dead already. The decision was clear.
“Noon,” he said aloud, confirming their telephone conference. “Tomorrow.”
Chapter 6
Grateful for smart lawyers and legal loopholes, Eddy Goss was back on the streets of Miami, following the familiar cracked sidewalk to his favorite hangout. It was in a desolate part of town, where women stood alone on street corners to pay for their hundred-dollar-a-day crack habit and married men drove slowly by to satisfy their twenty-dollar urges. Goss, however, always avoided the women, ignoring their blunt offers of a quick “up and down.” He would pass right by them on his way to the bright yellow building with no windows and huge black triple X’s covering the length of the door. Inside, the windowless walls were lined with cellophane-wrapped magazines sitting in floor-to-ceiling racks. Goss liked the magazines because the girls were always so much prettier than the women on the street.