Authors: James Grippando
Blood Money (30 page)
O
ne month and eleven days after Celeste Laramore slipped into a coma, Jack received a phone call from her father.
“Celeste opened her eyes!”
It was the best news Jack had heard since the check from BNN had cleared. The prognosis was still uncertain, but it was a first step toward a recovery that many doctors had predicted she would never take. It would be a long road, though Jack wondered whose might be longer—Celeste’s or Sydney’s.
Although Jack’s demand on BNN had been for five million dollars “payable to Celeste Laramore,” it would never be in Sydney’s blood to do anything for free, and the Laramore family agreed to cut a check for a hundred thousand dollars to her on the condition that it go toward the cost of the mental health treatment she needed. Jack’s last conversation with Sydney had been her call from Miami International Airport, two hours before her flight to Utah. She was entering a sixty-day program at a wellness facility for victims of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Sydney had sounded determined to succeed, but Jack doubted that she would ever return to Florida—unless, as part of the healing process, she felt compelled to get some kind of explanation from her mother in Florida State Prison.
Jack, too, got a share of the BNN settlement. He had his own idea of “recovery.”
“Dude, you sure you want to do this?” asked Theo.
They were in Theo’s car at the Twelfth Avenue exit from the Dolphin Expressway. Downriver, in the distance, stretched one of the most picturesque vistas of the Miami skyline, but Jack’s near focus was on a seedier stretch of riverfront along the expressway, where so much had happened the month before.
“I’m sure,” said Jack.
“It’s a lotta dough.”
Fifteen percent of anything over a million dollars was the discounted fee arrangement that Jack had given the Laramore family. It was less than half of what most lawyers would have charged, but Theo was still right: a lot of money, especially for a few weeks of work.
“I told Andie to think of this as my way of becoming debt-free,” Jack said.
“That’s cool.”
They crossed the drawbridge and continued on North River Drive toward an old neighborhood along the river. Once exclusively residential, the area had evolved into a haven for small business. Many historic houses remained, preserving some feel of the old neighborhood, but they were now home to Pilates studios, computer-repair shops, and everything in between. The Criminal Justice Center was less than a mile away—which was precisely the reason Neil Goderich had chosen this location for the Freedom Institute. Jack smiled as they turned onto Northwest Ninth Court.
Court.
Jack suspected that Neal had felt a little karma when, as a young and idealistic lawyer, he’d made that same turn off North River Drive and fallen in love with the perfect place that wasn’t located on a street, avenue, boulevard, terrace, lane, or road.
“What the hell?” said Theo as they pulled up at the curb in front of the house.
Jack climbed out of the car, stepped onto a sidewalk that had been ravaged by the roots of a century-old oak, and walked straight to the Gomez Brothers moving van that was parked in the driveway. The rear cargo doors were open, and Jack recognized the oak filing cabinet that one of the men was wheeling up the ramp on a dolly. The move-out was under way.
“Unload the truck,” Jack told the mover.
“Who are you?” he replied.
“Al Haig. I’m in charge.”
“Huh?”
It was another old Neil expression, but there was no time for a history lesson on who was running the White House after President Reagan was shot.
Sarah emerged from the house and stepped onto the front porch. She spotted Jack in the driveway and waved, but there was sadness in her every motion, right down to the way she moved her hand.
“Excuse me a second,” Jack told the mover. “Don’t put another thing on that truck.”
Jack walked up the gravel driveway and climbed the old wooden steps to the porch. Theo followed.
“Thanks for coming,” said Sarah. “We can use the help.”
“You can’t leave this place,” said Jack.
She breathed a heavy sigh. Just those few words from Jack were enough to make her eyes well. “Jack, we don’t have any choice.”
Jack removed an envelope from his back pocket and handed it to her. “You’re
not
moving,” he said.
She opened the envelope, peeked inside, and froze.
“Oh, my. This is . . .”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” said Jack. “From the BNN settlement. Hannah had a hand in that victory. I kicked in a chunk of my share, too.”
Her mouth opened, but the words were on a few-second delay. “Jack, I can’t take this.”
“I can,” said Theo as he snatched it from her hand.
“Knucklehead,” Jack muttered. He grabbed it and gave it back to Sarah, who took another deep breath.
“I don’t know what to say. This is just . . . amazing,” she said, her voice cracking with sheer joy and gratitude. Then her face lit up, her whole body seemed to respond, and she suddenly looked younger to Jack than on the day they’d met. She pulled him close and gave him an embrace from the heart that Jack would never forget.
“Thank you,” she whispered into his ear. “Thank you so much.”
“No hug for me?” said Theo.
“What did you do?” asked Jack.
“I’m the schmuck who has to haul all that shit off the truck after Mr. Gomez looks at you like you’re
loco
.”
Sarah laughed. “Come on, we’ll all do it.”
“Gladly,” said Jack.
Together, each with an arm around the other’s waists, they walked down the steps and slowly crossed the lawn.
“You know,” said Sarah, “this doesn’t change what we talked about before. Hannah still isn’t my first choice to run the institute. No more than you would have been fifteen years ago.”
Jack smiled as their walk continued across the grass. “One step at a time, Sarah. One step at a time.”
W
hen the first Jack Swyteck novel was published in 1994, never did I dream that someday I would write the acknowledgments for my twentieth novel. Even more unbelievable is that
The Pardon
and
Blood Money
were sold to the same publisher (HarperCollins) by the same agent (Richard Pine), and that this tenth entry in the Jack Swyteck series was edited by the same editor (Carolyn Marino) who suggested that Jack should be a series in the first place. I’m forever grateful to these
unusual
suspects.
Speaking of milestones, in 2006 Janis Koch e-mailed me about a grammatical error in novel number ten,
Got the Look
. Little did she realize that she was volunteering to help clean up the next ten, including
Blood Money
. Once known as “Conan the Grammarian” to her students, Janis has done this time-consuming work with great skill, purely out of her love for books and the rules of grammar. My longtime friend Gloria Villa has an equally discerning eye and a special place in this writer’s heart. Any errors you find in
Blood Money
are mine.
A special thanks goes to the Kayal family, whose son Ray (“RJ”) Kayal appears in
Blood Money
. The Kayals were the winners of a “character auction,” and their generous contribution to St. Thomas Episcopal Parish School in Coral Gables, Florida, will help keep RJ’s alma mater the special place that it has been for almost sixty years.
Finally, my love and gratitude go to my wife, Tiffany, for helping me through twenty novels that were published . . . and for sticking with me through my
real
“first novel,” which never will be.
J
AMES
G
RIPPANDO
is a
New York Times
bestselling author of suspense.
Blood Money
is his twentieth novel, the tenth in his acclaimed series featuring Miami criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck. James was a trial lawyer for twelve years before the publication of his first novel in 1994 (
The Pardon
). He now serves as a counsel to one of the nation’s leading law firms. He lives in south Florida with his wife, three children, two cats, and a golden retriever named Max, who has no idea he’s a dog.
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www.AuthorTracker.com
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* A Jack Swyteck Novel
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Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover photographs © Raphael Dias/Getty Images; Hisham Ibrahim/Getty Images
This book is a work of fiction. The
characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and
are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
BLOOD MONEY
.
Copyright © 2013 by James Grippando. All rights reserved under International and
Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have
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FIRST
EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978-0-06-210984-2
Epub Edition © JANUARY 2013 ISBN:
9780062109859
13 14 15 16 17
OV
/
RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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