Authors: James Grippando
And now Jack understood why.
“Mr. Swyteck, your next witness, please.”
His client’s earlier lies somehow seemed less devious now that Jack knew whom Lindsey had been protecting. Jack patted the back of her hand as he rose, trying to keep her from shaking. “Your Honor,” he said, his voice carrying throughout the courtroom. “The defense rests.”
J
ack couldn’t remember another good day that had felt so bad.
Before trial had even started, Jack had been well aware that the entire case could turn if he could just get Damont Johnson on the stand. But even as that first question for the lieutenant left his lips, Jack’s highest hope was to convince the jury that a kinky arrangement had gone very wrong and that Lindsey’s husband had ended up dead at the hand of his own best friend. Never had Jack figured that Johnson would hand him victory by fingering Lindsey’s son.
Of course he was devastated. As much as Jack wanted to pretend that his decision to take this case was all about Lindsey and her son, all about keeping an innocent mother out of jail, his motivations had always run deeper than that. It was about Jack and his biological son. Jack wasn’t sure what he’d expected to get out of this, even in the best of circumstances. At the very least, he had wanted to meet Brian, maybe get to know him on some level. It worried him that Brian would grow up without a father. It pained him that Brian might lose his mother, too. And it bugged him to no end that Brian might grow up with his grandparents in a tony, gated community where kids cried at their own birthday parties because Mommy had promised that Cirque du Soleil would be there and all she could pull off was a command performance by the traveling cast from the Broadway musical
The Lion King.
The very fact that he hadn’t suspected Brian, however, was troubling in its own right. Jack had crossed that line between personal interest
and professional judgment. He was blinded by emotions, which told him that he never should have been in the case in the first place.
And now he knew exactly why Lindsey had hired him.
He popped open a can of beer with one hand, channel-surfed with the other, as the local television anchors delivered their punchy spin to a newsworthy day at the courthouse.
“A shocking development,” said one.
“A monstrous blow to the prosecution,” said another.
Jack switched back and forth between stations, checked all of them out in rapid-fire fashion. Then he did a double take. He’d moved two stations beyond it before the image triggered something in his brain, but he hurriedly scrolled back to one of the stations where he thought he’d seen Hector Torres speaking.
It
was
him. The footage was taped, but it was only a few minutes old. The prosecutor was fielding questions from the media as he left the courthouse. Jack increased the volume and listened. He handled the string of “What will the prosecution do now?” questions with ease, never breaking stride as he dished out such time-honored platitudes as, “We shall stay the course until justice prevails.” One question, however, brought him to a dead halt.
“Mr. Torres, how do you answer charges from the defense team that you’ve known all along that Lindsey Hart was innocent?”
He shot an icy glare, then collected himself for the camera. Torres had made a career out of never losing his cool in public. “First of all, Lindsey Hart is not innocent. We’ll prove that tomorrow in our rebuttal case. Secondly, I have never concealed evidence of a defendant’s innocence in my life, so if I had such evidence, Jack Swyteck would have known about it.”
The reporter persisted, pushing closer. “So why do you think the defense is making those accusations?”
What accusations?
thought Jack. He hadn’t spoken to anyone.
Torres seemed to compose a response in his mind before speaking. “I don’t presume to vouch for Jack Swyteck’s integrity, but I’ve been friends with his father for three decades. I have to assume that some of the old man’s class has rubbed off, in which case Jack would never make a half-cocked accusation like that. So, until I actually hear it from the horse’s mouth, I’m going to treat those alleged accusations as mere rumors that don’t deserve a response.”
The taped segment ended, and the anchorwoman was back on screen. Jack switched to another channel, then another, but they had all moved on to other news. He could have called Torres to assure him that those accusations from “the defense team” hadn’t come from him, but he was content to leave it exactly the way Torres had played it: rumors.
He switched to ESPN, and the phone rang. It was Sofia. She’d seen the same broadcast, the same talk of accusations from the defense.
“Did you hold a press conference and forget to tell me about it?” she asked.
“No. Did you?”
“You know me better than that by now.”
He did. His entire career, Jack had choreographed every aspect of trial, from the number of times the defendant looked at the jury during direct examination, to the exact words that any member of the defense team uttered to the press. Sofia wouldn’t undermine him on this point.
Jack said, “I’m sure that reporter was just baiting him, attributing pure rumors to the defense team.”
“Clearly,” she said. “But I’m beginning to think that somebody should stand up and give Torres what he deserves.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more.”
Sofia said, “You think Torres knew all along that the boy did it?”
“No. I think he knew that if Johnson was pushed, he’d blame it on the boy. That’s why he kept Johnson hidden away from us. But he still doesn’t believe that Brian did it. I’m sure of that.”
“Do you want to get together tonight? Plan for Torres’s rebuttal?”
“Not unless you were able to talk Lindsey into meeting with us.”
“Sorry. She just wants to be alone tonight.”
“Can’t say I blame her. Everything she’s worked for over the past two months, every lie she’s ever told us, just came crashing down on her head. Or, I guess I should say Brian’s head.”
There was silence on the line, as if Sofia wasn’t sure what to say. Finally, she said, “Are you going to be okay, Jack?”
Jack was staring at the television. Basketball on ESPN Classics. To think, just a few days earlier he’d harbored secret thoughts of taking Brian over to the gym, maybe a little game of one-on-one. It could have been fun to play with someone who didn’t maul you on the way to the basket the way Theo did.
Not to be.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be okay.”
“Call me if you need anything. Or if you just want someone to talk to.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She said good-bye, and Jack hung up the phone. He drew a breath, but before he could exhale, the phone was ringing again. He picked it up and said, “Yes, Sofia?”
“You sure you’re going to be okay?”
“Do I sound like I’m not okay?”
“You sound a little like someone who’s trying too hard to sound okay, or someone who’s okay now but who probably won’t be once he sits down and really thinks about what happened.”
Jack looked at the phone, incredulous. The last time he’d had a conversation like this, he was married. “I’m okay.”
“Okay enough to do something?”
“Do something about what?”
“You ever been to Casa Tua’s on the beach? They have a great tapas bar upstairs. I won’t even talk about the case, if you don’t want to. I feel so bad for you. What you went through today was just awful. Sitting at home alone is only going to bring you down even more.”
“Thanks. Maybe another night.”
“Okay. Give me a call if you change your mind.”
“Sure. Good night.”
He hung up, then closed his eyes as the cushy leather armchair almost swallowed him whole. The phone rang the instant his body came to rest. He answered with just a hint of annoyance in his tone.
“Sofia, I swear on my mother’s grave I’m totally okay.”
The caller hesitated, then said, “Is this Jack Swyteck?”
Jack straightened in his chair. “Yes, sorry. I thought you were someone else. Who is this?”
“My name is Maritza Rodriguez. Formerly Maritza Torres.”
“You must be Hector’s—”
“I’m Hector Torres’s ex-wife.”
Jack was going to guess daughter, just to be nice, though the voice sounded plenty old. “How can I help you?”
“I’d like to meet with you,” she said.
“What about?”
“I’ve been following this trial from day one. I have to say, I’ve wondered all along if Hector had the right person. Then I saw the way he
treated your client, and all doubts vanished. That poor woman. But that’s just like Hector. Always treating the victim like the criminal, especially when it comes to an abused woman.”
“Is there something you want to tell me about the case?”
“You might say that. I was just watching the evening news. When I saw my ex-husband mention his long-time friendship with your father, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to say something.”
“About what, exactly?”
“About…” Her voice trailed off, as if she weren’t sure how Jack would react. “It’s about your mother.”
Jack froze. He had plenty on his mind, and tomorrow he had to contend with whatever Torres deigned to throw at him in rebuttal. But he’d been around long enough to know that people who were eager to talk tonight weren’t always willing to talk tomorrow.
“I’d love to talk to you, Mrs. Rodriguez. Just tell me where you want to meet.”
J
ack met Maritza Rodriguez at her house in Pinecrest.
South Florida wasn’t the birthplace of “McMansions”—multi-million-dollar spreads so cookie cutter in design that they bordered on tract housing for the filthy rich—but it had certainly run with the concept. Whole neighborhoods had succumbed to the bulldozer, vintage 1950 shoe boxes replaced by nine-thousand-square-foot Mediterranean-style megahomes in which twenty-foot ceilings, walls of windows, and four-figure monthly A/C bills came standard.
Jack was seated on the leather couch in the great room. It was supposed to be the heart of the house, but like most of these new houses he’d visited, it had a sterile feeling—Saturnia floors, ecru walls, crown moldings so high that you needed a telescope to see the dentil details. Behind Mrs. Rodriguez was a shiny black grand piano, another McMansion staple, as if a musical instrument that no one in the house knew how to play would somehow warm up the icebox.
“My ex-husband had a thing for your mother,” she said as she peered over the rim of her coffee cup.
Jack tried not to appear shocked. “That must have been a long time ago,” said Jack. “My mother died when I was born.”
“It was many, many years ago, before Hector and I even met. Before Hector came to this country.”
“It’s funny you mention this now,” said Jack. “A friend recently told me that Hector bears a strong resemblance to my mother’s old flame in Bejucal. The guy swears it was Hector Torres.”
“He’s probably right.”
“Only problem is, the guy’s name was Jorge Bustón. Not Hector Torres. Unless Hector changed his name.”
“Not to my knowledge,” she said. “People did do that, of course. Especially those who took a very vocal role against the Cuban government when they got here. If you left family back in Cuba, changing your name was a good way to keep your loved ones from being persecuted for your own anti-Castro activity waged in exile. But Hector never mentioned anything to me about changing his name.”
“As far as you know, your ex has always been Hector Torres?”
“Yes. But now that you raise the issue, if someone changes his name, it’s conceivable that he wouldn’t tell anyone. It all depends on the reason for the name change, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” said Jack, thinking. He could have probed more, but he didn’t want to get too far off the main point. “When you say your ex-husband had a thing for my mother, what do you mean?”
She sighed, as if not sure how to put it. “Let me start at the beginning. Hector and I met here in Miami in 1967, got married in 1968.”
“My mother was already dead.”
“Right. You were just a baby when Hector became friends with your father.”
“Why would he become friends with my father if he had a thing for my mother?”
“That’s what I wanted to know.”
“Did you ask him?”
“Yes. He told me why, but the answer was obvious. He still loved her.”
Jack shook his head, confused. “Wait a minute. He buddied up to my dad because he was still in love with my mother?”
“I can tell you for a fact that when Hector came to this country, even after he met me, he was determined to find your mother. When he learned that she was dead, he was devastated. Frankly, I think he became friends with your father for one reason. It was the only way he could find out what happened to the woman he really loved.”
“But he and my father have been friends all my life.”
“All I’m saying is that your mother was the reason they became friends in the first place. I didn’t say she was the reason they remained
friends over the years. I’m quite certain that, to this day, your father knows nothing about that relationship.”
“So, what made you call me now, after all this time?”
“Like I said, it bugged me to see that hypocrite ex-husband of mine on television invoking his friendship with your father. Especially after the way he treated your client on the witness stand. After the way he treated me in our marriage. After the way I’m sure he treated your mother.”
“What do you mean, the way he treated my mother?”
“Hector was—” She stopped herself, measuring her words. “I was married to Hector for only four years, but I know him well. Trust me, he’s never had a healthy relationship with a woman in his life. He’s not capable of it.”
“Do you know something specific about my mother?”
“Only what I saw.”
Jack blinked hard, even more confused. “Wait. You and Hector met after my mother was dead. So what could you have seen?”
“I saw a man consumed by the memory of a woman he couldn’t live without.”
“Lots of people carry a torch.”
“I’d call it an obsession.”
“He’d probably call it sentimental.”
“There was nothing sentimental about it. The man scared the hell out of me. It’s why I divorced him. I followed him one day,” she said, her voice tightening.
“What?”
“He used to leave the house every Saturday, not tell me where he was going. So I followed him one day.”
“Where’d he go?”
“The cemetery. Flagler Memorial Park.”
“That’s where my mother is buried. He visited her grave?”
“Yes. Every Saturday.”
“Even after he was married to you?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s why you divorced him?”
“It wasn’t just the visiting that bothered me.”
“What was it?”
“It was—it was just strange.”
“I’d like to know.”
“Like I said, I followed him to the cemetery. I hid behind a mausoleum so he couldn’t see me. He looked around to make sure no one was watching. And then he…”
Jack felt his pulse quicken. “What?”
Her voice started to shake. “He lay down on top of her grave.”
Jack went cold.
“And then he…” Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t say the rest, and Jack didn’t want to hear it anyway. Her eyes were cast down toward her coffee cup. Jack was looking at her face, but the image was suddenly a blur.
“So you divorced him,” said Jack, his anger rising. “And he remained friends with my father all these years. Shook his hand, smiled to his face, went to his birthday parties, used him for whatever political capital my old man was worth.”
“I didn’t know that until I saw him on the news tonight. But when I heard that—well, I just had to call you. I’m sorry. This has to be a terrible thing to hear about your own mother.”
“No need to apologize. You did the right thing.”
They sat in silence, as if neither one knew exactly where to take the conversation from here. Maritza stirred her coffee, and the spoon shook in her hand. The outing of her ugly secret had only seemed to make things more awkward.
Jack checked his watch, then rose. “Trial tomorrow. I should be going.”
She seemed relieved by the suggestion. She saw him to the foyer and opened the front door.
“Thanks again,” said Jack.
She shook his hand, then a look of concern came over her. “Please don’t tell Hector that I said any of this. I’m happy now. I’ve remarried, I have a nice life.”
Jack looked into her eyes, and he could see beyond the concern. He saw traces of genuine fear—an old fear that had suddenly reared its head after all these years. For an instant, it was as if he were looking into his own mother’s eyes, and he wondered if it was that same kind of fear that had driven her from Bejucal, that had carried her across an ocean. And then it suddenly came clear to him:
Abuela
may have
bought her daughter a ticket to Miami, but Ana Maria hadn’t boarded that Pedro Pan airplane because her mother told her to go. She hadn’t left Cuba out of shame. She was indeed running for freedom, the kind of freedom that only Torres’s ex-wife could understand.
“I won’t say a word,” he promised. He turned and started down the front steps, walking into the silence of night. As the door closed behind him, he turned for one last look, one final impression of the door too heavy on the house too big—and of the nervous woman inside, all too believable.