“Coincidentally, that’s exactly what a certain Cuban soldier is going to say if we call him in your defense. You and Johnson were having sex while your son slept in the next room.”

“I told you five times already, I was not having an affair with Damont Johnson. I wasn’t having an affair with anyone.”

Jack thought for a moment. “So, if Brian were to take the stand and say that a stream of strange men was parading toward your doorstep, he would be lying?”

“The prosecutor is bluffing. Brian would never say that.”

“Can you be sure of that? Remember, he’s been living with his grandparents for almost a month now.”

Lindsey tugged nervously at a strand of her hair. “I don’t know anymore. He’s ten. He could be manipulated into saying just about anything, I suppose.”

“Easily,” said Jack, stepping into the role of prosecutor. “ ‘Brian, did men ever come over to your house? Did they come with your father? Was your father there the whole time they stayed? Are you sure? Is it possible that your father left, and that the men stayed? Is it possible they came back later, after your father had left?’ Before you know it, Torres has your son rattling off the names of a half-dozen soldiers who came to visit his mother.”

“You can’t let that creep do that to my son.”

“There’s only one thing we can do to avoid it.”

Lindsey swallowed the lump in her throat. “Then that’s what we should do. I’m not going to let my son be manipulated into testifying against me.”

“You want me to withdraw my objection to Vandermeer’s testimony?”

“If that’s what it takes to keep him off the stand, yes.”

“That’s the way I’ll pitch it to Torres. I’ll let the doctor’s testimony go to the jury only on the condition that he agree not to call Brian as a witness.”

“Do it,” said Lindsey.

“All right. But it does create another problem down the road. It’s going to be that much harder for us to argue that the Cuban soldier is lying about you and Johnson.”

“I told you, I was not having an affair.”

“I know. And we agreed that if we put the Cuban on the stand, we would try to convince the jury that he was telling the truth about Johnson coming to your house the morning of the murder, but he was throwing in the spicy sex just to embarrass the Pintado family. But with Vandermeer in the equation, it’s no longer your word against the word of a Cuban soldier.”

“Then maybe we don’t call the Cuban.”

“Maybe we don’t,” said Jack. “I need to think more about that.”

Lindsey seemed to be searching for words, then finally she looked at Sofia, then back at Jack. “Could I speak to Sofia alone for a minute?”

Jack said, “I’m your lawyer, too. This is all privileged.”

“I would just feel more comfortable if Sofia and I were alone.”

“We’ve got just two minutes left on this break,” said Jack. “If there’s something that needs to be aired, it needs to be aired among all of us.”

A tense silence filled the room. “Okay,” said Lindsey. She drew a breath, unable to look Jack in the eye as she spoke. “The Cuban soldier…”

Jack waited, but the silence continued. “The Cuban soldier what?”

Finally, she said, “He isn’t lying.”

Somehow, Jack had already known. But hearing it still felt like a mule kick. “You lied to me again, damnit.”

“No, I didn’t lie. Lieutenant Johnson and I weren’t having an affair. It was…”

Again, she lapsed into silence. She was doing funny things with her lips, as if her mouth were at war with the words she was about to utter.

“It was what?” said Jack.

Her eyes closed, then opened, and her voice was barely audible as she said, “It was a good bit weirder than that.”

Jack felt that mule kick again.

There was a knock at the door, and Sofia opened it. The bailiff stuck her head into the room. “Judge Garcia’s back on the bench. He wants us back in the courtroom-now.”

Jack was torn, but a federal judge was not the kind of person to keep waiting. “We’ll finish this later,” he said.

“There’s nothing more to say.” Her chin was on her chest, and she seemed to be biting back her shame, if not shutting down the flow of information.

“Like I said. We’ll finish this later.” Jack grabbed his briefcase, then took his client by the arm and led her back to the courtroom.

34

Theo Knight was on a shopping spree. The search was on for the stolen parts-and for the guy who’d torched Jack’s Mustang.

As expected, relatively few shops specialized in classic-car parts, and many of those were highly specialized, dealing exclusively in Corvettes or foreign cars. A dozen phone calls produced no leads. Finally, a call to the Mustang Solution in Hialeah turned up the kind of bumper Theo was looking for. A personal visit to the shop confirmed that it was indeed Jack’s. Theo had washed that car hundreds of times, knew every dent and ding. The rear bumper on Jack’s car had a dimple to the right of the license plate mount. This one had the same dimple.

“How much you want for it?” Theo asked the shop owner.

“Four hundred.”

Fucking thief, thought Theo. He peeled off five bills and said, “An extra hundred if you tell me where you got it.”

“You a cop?”

“Cops take bills, dumbshit. They don’t dish ’em out.”

The owner smiled as he rolled up the cash and tucked it into his shirt pocket. “His name’s Eduardo Gonzalez. Goes by Eddy. Known him since high school.”

“Where do I find this Eddy?”

The guy made a cutesy face, as if he knew but wasn’t telling. Theo laid another fifty on the counter, which did the trick.

“He’s got his own welding shop or studio of some sort over on Flagler and Fifty-seventh. You’ll see it. Says ‘Eddy’s Palace’ on the door.”

Twenty minutes later Theo was headed down Flagler Street with the rear bumper of a ’67 Mustang convertible tied to his roof rack. He parked on a side street and walked up the block, past a liquor store, past a vacant theater, past one of those stores that sells everything you don’t need for just one dollar. He stopped at an old store front with a plate-glass window that bore the words EDDY’S PALACE.

He tried the door, but it was locked. The window looked as though it hadn’t been washed in years. Theo wiped away a little dirt and peered inside. Just enough lights were burning to let him see a few things here and there. At first it looked like nothing but heaps of scrap metal, all shapes and sizes. As he looked closer, however, he could see that the pieces all fit together. They had form. They were sculptures. Eddy’s Palace was an art studio.

Theo cupped his hands like blinders to cut down the glare. The forms came clearer. A huge, metal arm was reaching from the floor, like a hand from the grave. The man beside it was impaled on a lance, his gaping mouth exaggerated to emphasize his suffering. Several other figures seemed normal from the waist up, but the lower halves of their bodies were twisted and melted, overcome by metal tongues of fire. There were hundreds of other figures, some small, some larger than life, all with their mouths wide open, all with that same exaggerated expression of pain.

It looked like one man’s version of hell.

Theo stepped away from the window, and he was about to give the door another try when he noticed a little sign near the doorbell. It read: DOORBELL BROKEN, PLEASE ENTER AT BACK DOOR.

Dusk was turning to dark, and even Theo was having second thoughts about walking down an alley in search of the back door to hell. The neighborhood was at best questionable. The windows on nearby buildings were covered with burglar bars, and Theo recognized the cigar shop across the street from a newscast about a month earlier. The owner had been shot dead in a robbery. But he’d come too far to back down from some metal-worker-turned-artist who didn’t think twice about torching a true work of art, a classic Mustang convertible. Theo walked a few steps north and then turned down the alley.