Torres took a half step toward the bench, as if to underscore his plea. “Your Honor, I’ve been holding my tongue so far, but the problem with Mr. Swyteck’s motion isn’t just delay. This is outrageous, plain and simple. The victim in this case is the son of Alejandro Pintado. Mr. Pintado is a prominent Cuban exile, an outspoken critic of the Castro regime. We all know how Castro feels about Mr. Pintado. Judge, you must resist any invitation to allow Fidel Castro to manipulate this trial and thereby exonerate the woman who murdered Mr. Pintado’s son.”

“I take serious offense at that,” said Jack.

“Then you shouldn’t have brought the motion,” said the judge.

Jack was taken aback. “Excuse me?”

The judge looked down sternly. “If you take offense at being accused of allowing Castro to manipulate you, then you should not have brought the motion.”

“Sorry you feel that way, Judge.”

“Well, I do feel that way. To say the least, I am completely unamused by your attempt to leverage Fidel Castro’s political propaganda into a legal entitlement to depose a Cuban soldier who may or may not have seen anything. Indeed, we don’t even have his name, so we don’t even know if he exists. The motion of the defense to postpone the trial date until it can secure the deposition of this unspecified Cuban witness is denied. Trial is set to commence three weeks from today. We’re adjourned,” he said with a bang of his gavel.

The lawyers rose and watched in silence as he disappeared through a side door to his chambers. After a disaster like this, Jack felt the need to get out of the courtroom as quickly as possible. He packed his trial bag and started for the exit.

“See you around, Jack,” said Hector Torres. The prosecutor was glowing.

“Yeah. Take care.”

Sofia caught up with him, but Jack only walked faster. She kept pace, as if determined to make him say something. He refused, having learned not to talk when he was boiling mad.

The elevator came, and they entered together. It was still just the two of them. Jack watched the lighted numbers over the closed doors.

“How did I delude myself into thinking that a man like Judge Garcia would give this motion a fair shot?”

Sofia said, “We’re still in the first inning. It’s just one motion.”

“No, it’s deeper than that. If a federal judge has that visceral a reaction against a Cuban soldier as a witness for the defense, imagine how it’s going to play to the jury. How’s it going to play to someone whose husband spent twenty-six years in one of Castro’s political prisons for criticizing the government? Or to some guy who brought his family to this country on a rubber raft, only to have his daughter drown on the way over?”

“They can still be fair.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever fair is.”

The elevator doors opened. Jack stepped out. Sofia paused for a moment, then hurried to catch up as they crossed the main lobby and headed for the exit.

“What do we do now?”

“Damage control.”

“That should be minimal. It was a closed hearing. There’s a gag order. There shouldn’t be too much backlash from the me-” She stopped as they reached the revolving doors. “-media,” she said, finishing her thought.

Jack froze. On the other side of the glass doors, the media were waiting in throngs-camera crews, reporters with microphones, and the general sense of confusion that seemed to follow the media wherever they went. Most of the station logos were from Spanish-language radio and television.

“Señor Swyteck!”

They’d spotted him, so there was no turning back. Jack continued through the revolving door and met the mob head-on at the top of the granite steps near the courthouse entrance. An assortment of microphones was suddenly thrust toward his face. Jack tried to keep walking, but he could manage only baby steps. One of the crewmen on the fringe lowered a boom with a dangling microphone that clobbered him atop the head. He shoved it aside and forged his way forward.

A reporter asked, “Is it true that your client will be calling a Cuban soldier to the witness stand?”

The question nearly knocked Jack over. So much for the closed hearing. Courthouses weren’t quite the sieves that police stations were, but someone had tipped off the press already. The same question was coming from everywhere. Scores of reporters, each one wanting the scoop on the Cuban soldier.

“Is it true, Mr. Swyteck?”

Jack hated to respond with “no comment,” but he was still under a gag order, and the judge was mad enough at the defense as it was. He didn’t dare push it. “I’m sorry, but I can’t answer any of your questions at this time.”

His refusal to answer seemed only to feed the growing frenzy. The questions kept coming, dozens at a time, each one somewhere between a bark and an angry shout.

“What’s his name?

“What will he say?”

“Will he defect?”

“Es usted comunista?

Jack shot a look-Am I a communist?-and the camera flashed in his face. That last question had been purely a plant, designed to get him to look at the camera. It was like trying to wade through the muck of the Everglades, but Jack was slowly making his way down the steps, and the media went with him. Someone had taken hold of his jacket to keep him from moving too fast. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Sofia several steps behind, well within the mob’s nucleus. Finally, they reached the sidewalk, and with one last surge they pushed beyond the curb and squeezed into the backseat of a cab. Jack went first. Sofia jumped in after him, slamming the door behind her.

“ Coral Gables,” Jack told the driver.

The many faces of the media were sliding across the passenger-side windows as the car pulled away. Sofia brushed her tangled hair out of her eyes. Jack straightened his jacket. It was as if they’d run through the gauntlet.

“No media backlash, huh?” said Jack as the car started down Miami Avenue.

“It’ll blow over,” said Sofia in a breathless voice.

“Yeah, sure.” In about a hundred years.

24

CASTRO’S PAWNS?” That was the banner headline for the Latin evening news.

It was an ingenious cover-your-ass tactic that the libel defense bar had concocted, this badly abused practice of disparaging the hell out of someone and then disclaiming all liability by putting a simple question mark after the attack.

“Castro’s Pawns?”

“Drug Addict?”

“Toe-Sucking, Panty-Sniffing Loser Who Actually Dials the Phone Numbers in Men’s Room Stalls?”

Thankfully the nonsense had stopped at “Castro’s Pawns,” which was bad enough. Much of it rolled off Jack’s back, especially the attacks from an extreme journalist who would assail Jack’s Cuban witness this week, and then next week call for a ban on nursery rhymes that promoted homosexual lifestyles. (Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub.) Whatever the source, he didn’t want to be home when the phone started to ring off the hook with calls from the media. Nor did he want Abuela to die of embarrassment when she turned on the evening news. So he watched at his grandmother’s town house, poised for on-the-spot damage control.

“Dios mio!” she said, groaning.

“I’m sorry,” said Jack.

“I no mad with you,” she said, her emotions fraying her command of English. “I mad with them. A Cuban soldier for witness? Es loco.”

Jack didn’t say anything. It did seem like a long shot, but he wasn’t quite ready to dismiss as “crazy” the idea of a Cuban soldier coming forward to testify in his case.

“Look,” said Abuela as she pointed to the television. “Is Señor Pintado.”

The judge had issued a gag order, so Jack’s first reaction was that the station was broadcasting file footage. But it wasn’t. Alejandro was making a statement from his home. He and his wife were standing on the inside of the tall iron gate at the entrance to his walled estate. Various members of the media had gathered on the other side, their ranks spilling across the sidewalk and into the residential street. Pintado silenced them with a wave of his hand. Then he looked into the camera and addressed the television audience in his native tongue.