The 24th Letter ((Mystery/Thriller)) (26 page)

Through his left eye, O’Brien saw a shiny black eye, an earring, attached to an earlobe.  O’Brien batted weakly at it, the earring falling to the concrete.  Then the room grew dark, he fought back the bile and vomit.  The last thing he heard was an Irish accent.  “You’re one tough motherfucker, dude.  Bet you killed him.”   

  .  

SEVENTY

O’Brien awoke to the guttural sounds of feral cats challenging each other. Their long, throaty snarls and hisses echoed off the brick walls in the alley.  The shrieks reverberated, like two cats at the bottom of a well, backs arched, falsetto cries calling out in the dark.  He opened his eyes.  Through one eye, he could see the gang graffiti painted all over the walls.  Through the other eye, the graffiti was blurred, like looking through a keyhole to read an eye chart where the letters were in soft focus.  

He was lying on his back in an alley, having been tossed between leaky plastic garbage cans and wet newspapers.  The stench of cat litter, acrid urine, and feces came from a broken, black plastic bag near his head.  His shoe and sock were soaked.  He lifted his foot from a pothole filled with rainwater.  A single light bulb burned above the back entrance to a place called Lucy’s Lounge.

O'Brien touched his face, feeling the dried blood around his mouth, eyes and nose.  He touched a torn piece of flesh, the size of a nickel, which hung over his eyebrow.  He struggled to sit.  He could feel the Glock under his belt near the small of his back.  Somehow he had slept with the pistol grip pressed against his spine.  He propped himself up against the wet brick wall and wondered if he had suffered brain damage.  He whispered: “Name: Sean O’Brien.  Birthday: December twelfth…mother’s…maiden name…Lewis…”       

He looked at his watch.  It was 5:29 A.M.  How long had he been lying there?  Where was he?  Where’s the car he borrowed?  What happen to Ron Hamilton?

Salazar.  Was he dead?

O’Brien looked at the flesh torn off two knuckles on his right hand and one knuckle on his left.  He tried to stand, inching himself against the wall.  He checked his pockets.  His car keys and wallet were still there, and so was his phone. 

All the witnesses.  The video cameras.  If he’d beaten Salazar to death, it was self-defense.  As he leaned against the wall, he could feel the rain begin to fall, the cool water rolling down his sore and bloodied face.  O’Brien started to walk, slowly, his ribs on fire.  His head pounding, and his body felt like it had been beaten with a mallet.

When he got to the end of the alley, he stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked for a street sign.  Biscayne Street.  O’Brien knew where he was.  He stood more than ten blocks from the Sixth Street Gym.  Somebody had dumped him there, dumped him in the garbage far enough away from the gym to keep an ex cop out of their trash.

O’Brien went to the right.  He was less than a block from the ocean.  At this point, the sea would be his best friend, his best place to begin recovery.  He walked through the deserted streets, an occasional car trolling by—buyers and sellers—slowing and moving on when they saw O’Brien’s bloody face.

A black man, homeless, crouched near the front door of a closed print shop.  He sat under a yellowed shower curtain he’d wrapped around him to keep off the rain.  As O’Brien walked slowly by, the man said, “Hey, my man.  You look like somebody’s walkin’ bad dream, dog.  You covered in blood, dude.  You need some hep.  Hospital ain’t that close enough for you to be walkin’ to it.  You might bleed out.”

O’Brien nodded and turned to walk.  The man said, “I hate axkin’ you this, seein’ is how you look worse than me, but you hap’en to have a dollar, cap?  I can get me a doughnut in an hour or so when the shop opens.”

O’Brien’s hands were sore, bloodied, and he could barely open the wallet.  He pulled out a ten-dollar bill and handed it to the man who stood up.   “Thank you so much, I do appreciate your generosity.”

O’Brien nodded, walked on, following the sound of the sea in the distance.

#

IT WAS A BLUE WORLD—at least fifteen minutes before the sun crept over the Atlantic Ocean and the sea and sky merged in a palette of cobalt.  O’Brien stood alone in the diffused morning, no wind, no people, and few cars passing.  He stripped to his boxer shorts, folded his clothes neatly, covered his gun and phone, left them at the base of a tall palm tree, and then he walked out into the flat ocean.  When he got to where the warm water came up to his chest, he leaned back, lowering himself into the sea.  He held his breath and let the salt water soak into every pore on his body.  Then he floated on his back, gazing up at the sky that was beginning to lighten with the approaching dawn.

The moon hung over the South Beach skyline like a pumpkin, a perfect chamber of commerce poster.  O’Brien looked at the face in the moon and thought about what Dave Collins had said:
“You have to see this.”

What was the moon going to reveal that the death match he somehow survived had not?  Was Salazar lying when he was down?  He admitted beating Barbie, but said he never heard of the others. 
“That’s something between you and Russo…”

O’Brien dropped back under the dark water.  The warm thermos in the shallows felt good.  The gentle swells scrubbing the poisons, the potential infections, from his open cuts.  He knew the cut above his eye would require stitches.  His rib cage needed to be held in place.  He walked out of the water, back to the tree.  O’Brien sat on a park bench and used his cell to call a friend’s home—a man he hadn’t seen since Sherri died.

 Doctor Seth Romberg answered the phone in three rings. “Dr. Romberg, here.”

“Seth, it’s Sean O’Brien.”

“Sean, how are you?”

“I’ve had better mornings.  I need a few stitches.  Maybe a tetanus shot.  I would have waited a little later to call you, but I’m on a deadline.”

“Deadline?   I know I spent a lot of time with you and Sherri.  But you might want to try the emergency room.  I don’t –”

“Seth, I never would ask you this if it were not a life and death situation.”

“Are you hurt that severely?”

“No, but someone else will be if I’m delayed.  Please, meet me at your office.”

“Forty-five minutes, my office.”

O’Brien disconnected.  After he was stitched up, he would call Ron Hamilton to see if they found a body—Salazar’s body.  And he would learn if they were going to charge him with murder.

But now he would see a Sunday morning sunrise.  The horizon was building in soft strokes of orange and deep scarlet reds.  The flat sea was indigo blue.  A pelican flew

across the purple sky, flapping its wings only twice and sailing the rest of the distance as an ocean dressed in colors for a new day.

SEVENTY-ONE

Doctor Seth Romberg was sewing up O’Brien’s eyebrow when Detective Ron Hamilton entered the small office less than two blocks from the hospital.  Hamilton looked at O’Brien. “Sean, what in God’s name happened?  How bad are you hurt?”

The doctor answered.  “He’ll live, but he’ll be sore for a while.”  The doctor, early thirties, prematurely balding, began writing a prescription.  He looked over the rims of his glasses and said, “Sean, start taking these twice a day, soon as you can, to keep infections down.  Put an icepack on the eye.  And this one is for pain.”  As he turned to leave, he said, “Sorry to hear you were mugged.”

When the doctor went into another room, Hamilton said, “Mugged?”

“What am I going to tell him?  Doc, I was thrown into a ring with a psycho killer who literally wanted to take my head off.  I became the victim in what amounts to a human slaughterhouse.   A place where international tourists go to watch one man beat another to death.  If you can’t catch it live, it’s available on black market DVD and Internet sites for armchair psychopaths.”

“Can you walk?” Hamilton asked

“They haven’t broken my knees yet.”

“Let’s go outside to talk about this, okay?

#

HAMILTON AND O/BRIEN got into an unmarked Miami PD car and O’Brien tilted his head back against the headrest.  His cell rang.  It was Detective Dan Grant.

“Sean, we looked at Lyle Johnson’s cell phone records the day he was killed.  He made one call.  It was to his home number—his wife.”

“No calls to Miami Beach?”

“No.”

“He made one.   Probably stole a cell there in the hospital.  See if anyone reported a phone stolen.  If you find one, check those records for that day.  Thanks, Dan.”

O’Brien disconnected and looked over toward Hamilton.  “Before I tell you how I spent my night, can I ask what happened to you?  If ever I could have used backup, Ron, it was last night.”

“Bad wreck, Seventh and Collins.  Even with a blue light, I couldn’t go anywhere for twenty minutes.  By the time I got to the gym, the place looked as vacant as a church on Monday.  Locked.  Dark.  No sign of a yellow Ferrari.  Nobody.  Saw a black T-bird park about a block away.  That was about it.”

“T-bird is mine.”

“Yours?”

“Borrowed it from former defense attorney, Tucker Houston—”

“Wait a minute—you have Tucker Houston working for you?”

“He’s doing me a favor.  He’s really doing Charlie Williams the favor.  He’s trying to get a stay of execution from federal judge, Samuel Davidson.”

“How’d you get Tucker Houston to sign on?”

“Simple.  He’s an honest defense lawyer.  When were you at the gym?”

“After nine.”

“Unless I went through some kind of time warp…that was about when I was getting the shit kicked out of me, literally.”  O’Brien spent the next ten minutes telling Hamilton everything that happened from the time he entered the gym through his waking up in an alley with piles of garbage next to him.

Hamilton leaned back in the seat and made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a grunt.  “Think you killed Salazar?”

“No.  Wanted to.  He went down, and when I stumbled out of the ring…he was still breathing.”

“Sports betting on fights to the death—like something you’d find in Malaysia or some damn place”

“Why can’t the cocaine importation capital of the world have world-class death spectator sports for its clientele?”

“Russo never called me to drop the charges against you.”

“Probably because he instructed Salazar to kill me.  So with all these charges pending against me—now manslaughter charges potentially on my portfolio, and Charlie Williams facing an execution in…” O’Brien looked at his watch.  “…in twenty-two hours, I guess sleep isn’t an option.”

Hamilton started to say something when his cell rang.  He answered, nodded and said, “Where exactly was the body?  The ME thinks it’s what?”  A long pause and Hamilton said, “Thanks, Jim.”  He hung up, exhaled a sigh.  “We found Salazar’s body.  They said he looked like he’d been beaten with an aluminum bat.  Coroner’s preliminary exam at the site is that Salazar died from a broken neck.”

“Broken neck?  Someone killed him after the fight.  Where’d they find the body?”

“An alley at Ninth and Jasmine.  Lying behind a dumpster.  That’s less than a half block from where you spent the night.  You have no memory of fighting him outside, in an alley?”

“No.  It didn’t happen.  I was dumped there.  And I’m betting Salazar was, too.  It takes the heat off the gym and maybe off Russo if he has an interest in what goes on there.  And if I’d been spotted by a prowl car in that alley before I came to, in such close proximity to the Salazar’s body, I’d be in a holding cell now.  Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“Sixth Street Gym.” 

SEVENTY-TWO

A dozen cars were parked on the street outside Sixth Street Gym when O’Brien and Detective Ron Hamilton arrived.  Going through the front door, Hamilton said, “Sunday morning, maybe the gym is like attending church for some people.” 

O’Brien said, “The body’s a temple…mine’s just a little cracked.”

They walked down the hall and entered the gym, O’Brien scanning every sweaty face to see who was there from last night.  He recognized no one.  He stood next to a heavy bag and looked.  His eyes followed a man skipping rope near the large American flag on the far wall.  There was something different.

  The flag moved.  Just slightly at the left corner where the man fanned the rope.  Yesterday, the flag was pulled tight across the door.  Now it hung there, the ends next to the floor not secured.

There was a noise that sounded like a saw.  O’Brien turned toward a small windowless office away from the speed bags.  He said to Hamilton, “That guy, the one with the blender going…he was here last night.  He’s got a thick Irish accent.”

They approached the man who was topping off the smoothie he poured from the blender into a large Styrofoam cup.  He said, “Good morning, gentlemen.  Here for a workout?”  To O’Brien he said, “Tell me I should see the other guy.”

“I would, but he’s dead.”

The trainer sipped his drink.  No reaction.  Then he said, “Guess you don’t need boxing lessons.”

“I need a straight answer.  What happened to your accent?”

“Pardon me.”

“The Irish accent.  You’re dropping it now.  Why?”

“Sorry, mate, I don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about.”

“Like hell you don’t!  You’re the one who carried me out of the ring.  You were then one who probably finished off Salazar.”

“Ring?  Salazar?”

“The fight!  Salazar attacked me in front of at least three-dozen cheering, betting witnesses.  What’d you do, bus them in and then take them back to their hotels?”

“I think it’s time you two move on.”

Ron Hamilton showed his badge.  “I say when it’s time to leave.  We’re investigating a murder.  And as far as I’m concerned, this is a crime scene.  What’s your name?  And show me an ID.”