Blood Relations (29 page)

They walked the short distance to the state attorney’s office, going around the metal detectors at the rear entrance. At the elevators Sam leaned a shoulder against the wall and waited for the doors to open.

He noticed a stocky Hispanic man hurrying across the tiled lobby and recognized him a second later. delfonso Garcia, the uncle of the dead Ramos boy. He wore a cheaply made brown suit and a plain shirt open at the collar.

Sam nodded in greeting. “Mr. Garcia.”

“Mr. Hagen, how are you? I been calling for two days, and your secretary told me you have no time to call me back, so I said to myself, well, I think I’ll go see him face to face.”

The messages Garcia had left said he wanted to discuss the murder case against his sister Adela’s former boyfriend. Again. Sam had already returned two of Garcfa’s calls last week, and now he was making more of them. Sam had explained to him why the jury had acquitted Luis Balmaseda. He had talked about evidence and reasonable doubt. He had instructed Garcia and Adela Ramos to make a police report if Balmaseda was harassing her. He had called the Miami Beach Police to make sure it was a priority. He didn’t know what else to tell him.

“Sorry I couldn’t get back to you. I’ve been in trial.”

He introduced the two young lawyers, and delfonso Garcia mumbled a hello, then said, “They work with you?” When Sam nodded, Garcia said, “Luis has been calling Adela again. He says to her how much he loves her and wants her back. The man is crazy. He killed her son, and now he wants her back.”

Sam said, “I advised you to call the police, Mr. Garcia.

Have you?”

“They don’t do nothing.” Garcia’s voice was soft, but anger lay like coiled steel beneath the words. “Luis is scaring her. He follows her and he cries. He says he loves her so much. He is sorry for killing Carlito.”

The two young men glanced at each other.

The elevator doors opened and Sam gestured for Garcia to get on. “Come upstairs.”

Garcia said, I told Adela, ‘Let Luis come close to you.

Let him talk. And put this in your purse.”

” From his coat pocket, Garcia withdrew a microcassette recorder. He held it up in his big, work-roughened hand. When he hit the play button a tinny, hollow male voice sobbed from the speaker.

“Adelita, discidpame, no Intent que Carlito se muriera, te juro. Que Di4s me condene si miento. Yo estaba fuera de mi mente por celos de ti.”

Sam knew one of the young lawyers was bilingual.

“What does he say?”

“He says he didn’t mean for Carlito to die, may God send him to hell if he’s lying. He wants Adelita to forgive him. He was jealous. That’s why he did it.”

The elevator doors opened. No one moved. One of the young men quickly stuck a foot across the tracks as the door began to close again. They all got out.

Garcia’s expression was triumphant. “You take this to the judge. Tell him to get the jury back. Make a new trial.

This time the filthy son of a bitch, he’s going to die for what he did.”

The three or four people in the hall were staring at Garcfa. Sam hesitated, then said quietly to the young lawyers, “Gentlemen, why don’t you come into the conference room with us. And on the way I’d like you to decide what our legal options are.”

E changing I glances with each other, they followed Sam and Garcia down the hall. The conference room was furnished with a few steel tables and some folding chairs.

Windows gave a view west toward the justice building and the county jail behind it.

When they had all sat down, Sam looked from one of the young men to the other, waiting.

The bilingual lawyer glanced at Garcia, then said, “Well, I think we’ve got a double jeopardy problem here, Mr. Hagen.”

Sam asked the other man his opinion.

I regret to say it’s the same. The defendant can’t be brought to trial twice for the same offense.”

“What does this mean?” demanded Garcia.

Sam said, “It’s our system of criminal procedure, Mr. Garcia. Once the jury has spoken, we can’t ask them to reconsider, no matter what new evidence we find. We have only one chance to put a man on trial.”

He was outraged. “This makes no sense! Luis Bal maseda is guilty.”

“We know that, but there’s nothing we can do about it now except prosecute him for stalking Adela. This is a different offense. I’m sorry.”

“But I have proof!” Garcia looked around the table.

“He murdered Carlito. He said this.”

“Tell Adela to come see me,” Sam said. “I’ll talk to her.

And meanwhile, don’t you do anything we’re all going to regret. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Garcia’s face darkened. “You don’t care to do nothing. What kind of place is this? You let murderers go free.”

“It isn’t us, Mr. Garcia. I wish I could do what you ask, but I can’t. It’s the law.”

As if the words he wanted to say were bile in his throat, delfonso Garcia swallowed several times. Abruptly he picked up the tape recorder from the table and walked out of the room.

For a long moment no one spoke.

Finally, Sam stood up and gave the two younger lawyers a weary smile. “There it is, gentlemen. We can get a conviction for a botched penile enlargement and we let murderers go. What do you think about that?”

The two young assistants rose silently and gathered the manslaughter files they had laid down on the way in.

Sam arranged to meet Eugene Ryabin at the downtown campus of Miami-Dade Community College. Ryabin had located Tommy Chang, who had agreed to talk to him. In four days the police had no real leads in the murder of Charlie Sullivan, only a list of people who might have wanted him dead. One of them was George Fonseca. A restaurant manager on Ocean Drive had contacted the police to report that two weeks ago Fonseca had to be restrained from attacking Sullivan. He didn’t know what the dispute was about, but did recall that a young Asian man had been sitting at the table. The manager described him, and Ryabin thought it might be Tommy Chang, whom he had met at the murder scene on Sunday.

Tommy Chang might give Ryabin something to work IL

with this afternoon, when George Fonseca would appear at police headquarters. Fonseca’s attorney had agreed to routine questioning-in a spirit of cooperation, he had said. This would be touchy, as the murder victim had been a witness against Fonseca in another crime. The attorney would call foul if questions veered too close to the sexual battery case. Sam had cautioned Ryabin that inquiries would have to relate only to the murder of Charlie Sullivan.

Sam arrived at the college just as classes changed, and the wide plaza outside the main building teemed with students. They dressed in the ubiquitous uniform of the young: shorts, jeans, Tshirts, sneakers. Their voices were loud and cheerful, their faces a variety of ethnic types.

He stood in the plaza in his dark suit, and the students flowed around him as if he were a rock in a babbling stream. He thought of Matthew, who had promised, finally, to enroll for a semester. Sam was going to pay his books and tuition, even his rent. Whatever he needed. But Matthew let the deadline for registration pass, and Sam told him he could earn his own damned tuition if he wanted to go to college.

Among the bobbing heads, Sam noticed a white one.

Gene Ryabin was coming through the atrium, smiling as if buoyed by so much vitality and youth. He spotted Sam and pointed toward the fountain. Water poured down a low, slanting wall of roughly made concrete bricks, then filled a shallow, nearly flat basin, lapping at the opposite end. They met under the shade of a tree growing from a circle of ironwork.

Ryabin reported on his progress in questioning Martin Cassie, whose wife had been one of Charlie Sullivan’s conquests.

“None, I’m afraid. Mr. Cassie is avoiding me.” Ryabin sighed. “I’ll have to find something to arrest him for.

Maybe traffic tickets, does that sound good?” He touched Sam’s arm. “Here’s Tommy coming.”

Sam recognized him, the boy with Chinese eyes. His long black hair was tied back in a cord, and he had a book bag slung over one shoulder.

Ryabin introduced himself, then said, “This is Sam Hagen from the state attorney’s office, the prosecutor on Miss Duncan’s case.” “Yeah, we met. Hi, Tommy Chang extended a hand.

how’re you doing’T’

They found seats at a red-painted metal umbrella table.

The rush of students had let up. Ryabin asked Tommy about himself, his classes, his interest in photography, and his work with Caitlin Dorn. Then Ryabin asked how he had happened to meet Charlie Sullivan. On a photo shoot with Caitlin, Tommy replied.

“You went with Sullivan to a restaurant on Ocean Drive,” Ryabin said.

“Right. He said he’d tell me about fashion photography and modeling. I mean, that was the only reason I went. He tried to come on to me, but I told him I was straight, so he left me alone. We talked for a while, but then he, like, flipped out and told me to leave. It was weird.”

“The manager says George Fonseca caused some trouble?”

Tommy nodded. “He was driving by and saw Sullivan, and he jumped out of his car and started screaming at him because Sullivan was going to be a witness for Ali. Then they got into an argument about Claudia Otero. She’s a fashion designer from New York, and Sullivan was, like, I guess her boyfriend.”

Sam remembered the name Claudia Otero. Rafael Soto had mentioned her, one of Charlie Sullivan’s many sexual partners. He said, “Why did they argue about Claudia Otero?”

Tommy said, “George said the reason Sullivan was going to testify was because Claudia Otero put him up to it. She supposedly hates Tereza Ruffini, Klaus Ruffini’s wife. Tereza’s a designer too. George thought that Sullivan was trying to help her. I guess his theory was that if Klaus is convicted of rape, it would hurt Tereza’s business.”

Ryabin asked, “What did Sullivan say about Klaus Ruffini?”

“Nothing much. He didn’t like him, I know that.”

:‘He didn’t give the reason?”

‘No. He just got into it with George. George said he IL

would bust him in the teeth. Then Sullivan told George he’d kick his ass. They weren’t just talking. They were going to fight. Then the manager came out and told George to leave.”

“What happened after that?” Ryabin asked.

“We talked some more. Sullivan invited me to a party his agency was giving, then he became very insulting and told me to get lost.”

“Why did he do that?”

“I have no idea.”

“Is there anything else you can remember about the conversation?” Ryabin asked.

Tommy didn’t say anything for a while. He brushed a leaf into one of the holes in the red wire mesh the tabletop was made of. “Yeah.” He looked over at Sam. “George also accused Sullivan of trying to get back at him because of your son.”

“My son? Matthew?” Sam exchanged a glance with Ryabin, whose brows had risen a fraction of an inch.

“They didn’t, like, mention you. They said Stavros. Ali says that’s your son, right? He was a model?”

“Yes. Stavros was his middle name. What did they say?”

“Well, George said Sullivan was still pissed off about Stavros, that’s why he was going to testify against him. And Sullivan said no, that wasn’t it, but I asked him after George left. He told me that Stavros died in a motorcycle accident, and the way he talked, it sounded like he blamed George for it.” Tommy shrugged, then said, “According to Sullivan, George got Stavros hooked on drugs.

Heroin.”

The sounds of the plaza seemed to recede into nothing.

Sam stared at Tommy.

“I guess you didn’t know.”

“What else did he say?” Sam asked.

“That Stavros was doing coke and meth also. This was in the context of Sullivan warning me to stay away from drugs, which I don’t do. Sullivan didn’t either. He was angry at George for getting your son into it. He said to talk to Caitlin Dorn. I asked her. She said the same thing. That he-your son-was doing heroin.”

When Sam said nothing more, Tommy looked back at Ryabin. “That’s all I can remember.”

Ryabin thanked him, gave him his card, and instructed him to call if he thought of anything else. Tommy Chang shook their hands, then walked away, going through the wide opening that led to the inner courtyard of the main building.

Sam turned around and stared at the traffic that passed without letup between the plaza and the old tile-roofed post office across the street. Matthew had lied to him, lied to Dina. Had promised her that he didn’t do this, had never, would never.

Charlie Sullivan had spent nearly two hours in Sam’s office tellina, him about the attack on Ali Duncan. In an r’

offhand way he had mentioned Matthew. But he had said nothing about heroin. Sam had known about the heavy drinking. He assumed grass and cocaine, the drugs of choice on South Beach. He had not suspected needles and searching for veins.

Maybe it wasn’t true. There had been no signs of this. Nothing. Not this. Or maybe Matthew had tried it a couple of times, and Tommy Chang had assumed too much.

“Sam-” Ryabin patted his coat pocket for his cigarettes, but didn’t take them out. He said, “Forgive me if I’m asking you a difficult question. What do you think was going on between Matthew and Charlie Sullivan?”

Sam looked at him, then made a short laugh. “Going on? Nothing. They knew each other. They were in the same business. Maybe they were friends, but that’s the extent of it. I have no doubts about my son in that way, Gene.”

Ryabin shrugged. His attention seemed to be on a group of girls in shorts walking by, laughing and talking in 9panish. Their dark hair gleamed in the bright sunlight. Ryabin watched them, the morose expression on his face not changing. He said, “Tommy Chang said Sullivan blamed George for Matthew’s death. Why would there be blame unless he cared for him in some way?”

“All right, maybe Sullivan was interested. Matthew was a handsome kid, but he wouldn’t have responded, any more than Tommy did. He would have seen what Charlie Sullivan was like.”

“Even so,” Ryabin said, “Sullivan hated George Fonseca. And so I ask, why? If it was a mutual hatred, we might have something. A motive. Not only that, but now that Sullivan’s dead, he can’t testify against Fonseca. So.