The Victim (13 page)

Anton nodded. Jack considered the filing of charges to be a declaration of war. When he stood at the podium at an arraignment and demanded a trial by jury, he wasn’t just uttering the perfunctory words spoken by most defense lawyers in hopes of delaying the case long enough to finish getting paid and hammer out a plea. He meant it. The only time his cases pleaded out was when the prosecutors caved to his demands, coming to the realization that they didn’t want to face Jack Savarese at trial. Seventy years old and he showed no signs of looming retirement. He still tried at least sixteen cases per year.

“
Well. I don’t know what I’m going to do about Bryan. I may drop the charges, I may not. I just wanted to make sure that he was protected.” She offered a handshake. “Thanks again for you help.”

Anton shook her hand. “My pleasure.”

She pulled a soft pack of Marlboro 100s from her purse. “Want one?” she asked, putting the filter between her lips.

“
Nah,” he said dismissively. “I quit smoking about ten years ago.”

CHAPTER 13

Anton braved traffic on the Dolphin Expressway. He had checked Bryan Avery’s inmate profile one last time before leaving the office. As expected, Corrections had moved Bryan from the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, which served as the central intake facility for the Miami-Dade jail system, to a more permanent housing location at the Metro West Detention Center, about twenty miles west of downtown Miami.

He tuned his SiriusXM dial to the Elvis Radio channel. “Way Down” was playing, one of his favorites. Recorded at Graceland in October of 1976 with gospel legends J.D. Sumner and the Stamps Quartet providing backup vocals. Anton had gotten into heated debates with Elvis purists who still thought The King was at his finest when he was shaking his hips on the Ed Sullivan Show and wearing tuxedo pants. That young lean kid with the Tony Curtis pompadour. Slightly dangerous, the white boy with the Negro sound. Anton preferred the older Elvis. Vegas Elvis, thick mutton chops, sweating in his sequin jumpsuit, bloated from bacon sandwiches and Percocet. That was the Elvis he loved. He turned it up at the chorus, always amazed as Sumner hit that low C.

Besides, music just sounded better with thirty grand in his pocket.

It was after six by the time he pulled onto a desolate stretch of Northwest 41st Street, driving two miles on uneven asphalt past a quarry to the jail. Towering lights showered the campus, illuminating the rolled sheets of razor wire topping the fifteen-foot fence that surrounded the entirety of the jail. Dense woods enveloped the property, providing enough distance from civilization as well as natural prevention against escape.

Anton parked in a visitor spot and turned on the dome light. He read over the agreement. Nerves fluttered in his stomach. He hadn’t deposited the check. Bryan Avery was the client, a man whom Anton had not yet met. If his father was big in the business community, perhaps he had already retained a lawyer for his son. Bryan’s father probably played golf with some managing partner at Holland & Knight who knew a top-notch defense attorney he could refer him to. A Jack Savarese. Or maybe Bryan would take one look at a lawyer just two years older than him and think to himself,
Is this the guy I’m going to trust with my life?

Anton grabbed a legal pad, a pen, and the agreement from his briefcase and went into the reception area. He went through the motions of providing his driver’s license and Florida Bar card to the officer on desk duty and went through the metal detector. An officer set him up in an interview room and told him that his client would be down to see him shortly. The room was large enough to comfortably seat two. There was a small square table with four chairs around it. There were two doors, one for the attorney and one for the inmate.

After waiting for ten minutes Anton heard the clang of the deadbolt. A corrections officer led Bryan Avery into the room.

“
Just hit the buzzer when you’re done, counsel,” the CO advised Anton, as if he hadn’t been to Metro West a thousand times.

Anton understood, though. He had a young face, probably resembled a first-year PD. He figured, however, that the $1,200 navy Valentino suit and red Armani tie would have conveyed an image of private practice.

Anton leaned across the table and shook Bryan’s cuffed hand. “I’m Anton Mackey. Your wife hired me as your lawyer.”

Bryan shook back. A weak, tentative grip. “Hi.”

He was a slight man, his shoulders narrow, his forearms thin and veiny. Anton was five-ten, 200 pounds. Not a little guy but no giant either. Bryan seemed half Anton’s size. Five-seven, maybe 140. Certainly bigger than Daniella, who might have been five-one, but not the brute that she had described. At least nobody seemingly capable of immense physical violence.

His light-brown hair was mussed up in whitish clumps. Clearly last night’s hair product had not been washed out. Dark stubble peppered his jaw. His left eye was purple and bulgy. A scab crusted his bottom lip. Anton could make out six stitches in the cut just under his hairline.

Corrections had put him in a red jumper, a signal to the jail staff that he was to be housed separately. That designation was usually reserved for violent offenders or inmates who needed to stay off the mainline. Anton assumed the latter. Nothing about Bryan indicated that he was tough.

“
Can I call her?” he asked.

“
Not now. Don’t call her; don’t have somebody else call her. Don’t write her. Nothing. The bond judge issued a stay-away order.” Bryan nodded, although his glazed expression showed an empty gesture, not comprehension. “You’re being housed by yourself?”

“
Yeah. They had me in one of those heavy gowns at first.”

“
That’s called a Ferguson gown,” Anton explained, not willing to call it a suicide smock as he did in the crude company of fellow defense attorneys. “It’s a garment made out of heavy cloth that you can’t tear into shards to hang yourself with. They may have thought that a guy like you may have been suicidal. Are you okay otherwise? You in pain?”

“
Nah, they took me to the infirmary.” He pointed to his stitches. “I guess that’s where I got these.”

“
You guess?”

“
Yeah. Everything’s still a blur. Like a dream, you know?”

Still a blur?

Anton made a note on his legal pad to bring a HIPAA release form the next time he came to visit Bryan. If he had gone to the infirmary prior to receiving his housing assignment, it’s possible that the jail medical staff took blood to check for intoxicants and any medications that could interfere with whatever the jail was going to prescribe him for pain. If Bryan signed the proper waiver, the jail could turn over his medical records. Then Anton could see if he was on drugs or under the influence of alcohol when he broke into his wife’s apartment.

Anton presented Bryan with the agreement for legal services.

“
Before we continue this conversation I’m going to need you to sign this. It’s an agreement for legal services; it basically outlines everything that I am going to do for you as your attorney. Your wife has already satisfied the payment so that’s not a concern.”

Anton reviewed the agreement with Bryan line by line. Without objection or asking too many questions Bryan signed his name.

The $30,000 was Anton’s, free and clear.

Anton folded the agreement and slipped it inside his jacket pocket. “Let’s start from the very beginning. Can you tell me what happened?”

Bryan massaged the bridge of his nose. “Man, I just don’t know. I mean, we’ve been split up now for like two months. She moved out, got an apartment. I stay back at the house. I wanna get back with her, right? So we’ve been talking. Last night she texts me, ‘You wanna go to Blue Room?’”

“
She
invited you?”

He cocked his eyebrow. “Yeah, so?”

Anton thought about the statement she had made earlier that afternoon in his office.

So anyway, he wants to get back together, right? So I agree to meet him for drinks at Blue Room last night.

He
wants
to get back together. I
agree
to meet him for drinks.

Daniella had made it sound as if Bryan were the one pushing for the meeting.

“
Just making sure. Who’s your mobile provider?”

“
MetroPCS.”

Anton made a note to have Mandy subpoena Bryan’s text message records.

“
So what happened?”

“
She texted me and asked if I wanted to meet her for drinks at Blue Room. My office is just up on Biscayne and Flagler so I said sure. I was working late so I went straight from the office.”

“
What time would you say you met her there?”

Bryan stared up at the light panels. “Uh…I dunno. Ten, maybe.”

“
Is it common to work that late?”

Anton recalled that Daniella had mentioned Bryan’s incessant work habits as one of the reasons for the deterioration of their relationship.

“
I work for my father’s company, the Avery Group.” Bryan stared as if expecting Anton to know what he was talking about. “Major construction contracts. We were one of the top bidders for the Port of Miami Tunnel Project but got beat out. Anyway, our new thing is revitalizing some of the economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Park West, Overtown. In partnership with the city we use eminent domain to buy up mostly abandoned properties to turn into office buildings and condominiums. All that new construction you see along Miami Avenue south of Twentieth is us.”

Anton pondered whether he should have quoted a higher fee.

“
So it sounds to me that your father’s company occupies a lot of your time.”

“
You could say that.”

“
And that took its toll on your marriage?”

Bryan huffed in frustration. “See, that’s what I don’t get. Daniella’s got her own life. She’s two years younger so she’s still ‘in her twenties
,
’” he said, making air quotes. “She’s been living here for years, has her own friends. Worked in-house as an interior decorator with West Elm right up until we got married. She does her own thing, goes out to bars and clubs. My working late doesn’t seem to cut into her social agenda. In fact it kind of works for us.”

“
Marriage is a strange animal.”

“
Tell me about it.”

“
Anyway. You get to the bar; it’s about ten. How many drinks did you have throughout the course of the night?”

Bryan squinted, cupped a hand over his eyes to shield them from the bright florescent light. He seemed hungover.

“
That’s what’s strange. I had two drinks.”

“
Martinis, right?”

“
Daniella tell you that?”

“
Yes. So two martinis.” Anton sized up his client. “Bryan, you’re not a terribly big guy. A martini is nothing more than a glass of vodka. Two glasses of vodka could get you drunk on an empty stomach.”

Bryan shook his head emphatically. “No way. First off, it wasn’t on an empty stomach. One of the reasons I was working late was because I had a dinner at Capital Grille with some prospective investors. That went from six to about nine. Then I went back to the office to finish up some work when Daniella texted me.”

“
What’d you have at Capital Grille?”

“
Bone-in rib eye, garlic mashed potatoes, creamed spinach. We ordered Caesar salads, ate a ton of bread, too.”

“
Did you drink with dinner?”

“
One glass of malbec.”

“
So you don’t think it’s possible that two vodka martinis could have gotten you drunk?”

Bryan muffled a laugh. “I grew up here, man. One of the only non-Hispanic Miami natives you’ll ever meet. My father was born here, too. You should hear him talk.”