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  I moseyed down the corridor to the lab where another technician would fill five vials with my blood for yet more tests. I then returned to the locker room, changed back into my clothes, and checked my cell phone. Kip hadn’t called. His phone went down with his Tesla and was being used, if at all, by an alligator. But he could have used a hospital phone.

  I called Gloria Sanchez in the trauma center.

  “Your nephew was released about an hour ago,” she told me.

  “Damn! What’d he do, take an Uber?”

  A pause, and then she said, “No, he left with two men.”

  “What men?”

  “I’d never seen them before and didn’t speak to them. Kip was in a wheelchair, which is standard procedure, and one man pushed him while the other walked alongside. The men were wearing dark suits.”

  “Suits with ties?” I asked.

  “Yes, why?”

  “It’s July in Miami. Only lawyers and detectives wear suits and ties.”

  “I don’t know who they are, Jake. I’m sorry.”

  I was plagued with questions that frightened me. Just what was Kip involved in? Was it so dark and terrible that he couldn’t confide in me? Didn’t he know that I was the one he could trust, the one he could rely on?

  I wanted to scream to the heavens, scream so loud that Kip could hear me and come running home.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Lard Ass and a Hard Ass

  I wanted to be tracking down Kip, but at 3 p.m., with my mind elsewhere, I was back in court on Bert Kincaid’s disbarment proceeding.

  Kincaid called Dr. Arthur Eisenberg, a psychiatrist, to testify as an expert witness. He was a trim man in his fifties with a gray goatee and wire-rimmed glasses, which apparently is the required uniform for shrinks.

  “Dr. Eisenberg, what’s sex addiction?” Kincaid said.

  “It’s a mental disorder in which people obsessively engage in sex with multiple partners to a degree that interferes with work and relationships.”

  “Have you examined me with respect to this disorder?”

  “Yes. We discussed your infidelity to your wife and your sexual relationships with your female clients.”

  “Were you able to reach any medical conclusions?”

  The shrink cleared his throat and said, “Your aberrant conduct appears to be in response to dysphoric mood states, including depression and anxiety. You can’t control your behavior. You’re a sex addict.”

  Judge Gridley emitted a surprised hmmm-ing sound and said, “Offsides, doc! Are you saying Bert Kincaid’s unzipping his trousers ’cause he can’t help it?”

  “Sex addiction is no more about sex than binge eating disorder is about food or compulsive gambling is about money,” Dr. Eisenberg said. “The sex addict’s behavior stems not from lust but from stress and depression.”

  “In-ter-est-ing,” the judge said, chewing on the word. The judge peered over his glasses at Kincaid. “You need your shrink to say anything else, Bert?”

  Meaning the judge gets the point, so let’s whip this horse to the finish line.

  “Your Honor, that’s my case. Since I’m suffering from a disease, I’m protected by the Disabilities Act, and it would be discriminatory to disbar me.”

  “Jake, you want to ask the doc anything?” Judge Gridley asked.

  Not really. I wanted to find out who picked up Kip from the hospital. I wanted him home, safe and sound. But I was getting paid to prosecute Kincaid, and that required beating up his shrink. Oh, pardon me, cross-examining the eminent psychiatrist.

  “Dr. Eisenberg,” I began, “in the extensive research I’ve done on you, which consists of Googling your name five minutes ago, it appears you have a pediatric psychiatry practice. Is that right?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And you’ve written scholarly articles on mental issues of teenagers, correct?”

  “That’s true.”

  “Have you ever written about sex addiction?”

  “I have not.”

  “Is sex addiction listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders?”

  A glum look settled on Dr. Eisenberg’s face. “It is not.”

  “And isn’t the D.S.M. your team’s playbook?”

  “Playbook?”

  “The bible of your profession. The Holy Grail. The word from on high.”

  “It’s how we make diagnoses, yes.”

  “Is schizophrenia in that book?”

  “Of course.”

  “Bipolar disorder?”

  “Yes.”

  “PTSD and antisocial personality disorder?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anorexia and bulimia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even gambling disorder is in the DSM, isn’t it?”

  Judge Gridley piped up. “Only time gambling’s a disorder is when you’re losing. Like when you scored a touchdown for the wrong team, Jake, and I dropped five hundred bucks.”

  “Scored a safety, Your Honor,” I corrected him.

  “I remember. You recovered a fumble and ran to the wrong end zone.”

  “I got turned around.” Truth was, I suffered a concussion making the tackle. I still had enough wits to scoop up the ball but not enough to head the right way.

  “Wrong-Way Lassiter,” Kincaid butted in, reminding me of the newspaper headline, in case I’d forgotten.

  “Jake, I get your point,” the judge said, his mind miraculously returning to the case. “Sex addiction ain’t official. You got anything else?”

  I wasn’t sure. There’s an unwritten rule about not asking a question on cross unless you know the answer. But I don’t blindly follow rules handed down by professors who may not know their asses from the Ninth Amendment, whatever that is.

  So, I went fishing. “Dr. Eisenberg, are you and Mr. Kincaid friends?”

  “I wouldn’t use that word.”

  “I’m going to take a wild stab here. Are the two of you related?”

  “Yes, you could say that.”

  “I’d rather you did. Related by blood or marriage?”

  “Marriage.”

  He was making me drag it out of him. “Dr. Eisenberg, is Bert Kincaid your brother-in-law?”

  He didn’t say “unfortunately,” but his eyes revealed as much. “Yes, sir.”

  “So, married to your sister?”

  “Yes, Audrey.”

  “Does Audrey work outside the home?”

  “Not for many years.”

  “If Bert Kincaid loses his law license, will you have to support your sister?”

  He sighed, looked at his brother-in-law with hang-dog regret, and said, “It’s certainly possible. She’s told me as much.”

  “I have nothing further,” I said.

  The judge grunted his approval. “Jake, you were a lard-ass linebacker, and you’re a hard-ass prosecutor. I’m taking this under advisement, and I’ll rule within a week.”

  Two minutes later, I was pounding down the courthouse steps—nimble as a water buffalo—when my cell phone rang. It had to be Kip, right? But caller I.D. showed “Sugar Ray,” meaning Raymond Lincoln Pincher, our duly elected State Attorney.

  A county bus on Flagler Street belched black smoke in my face as I answered the call. Ray skipped the preliminaries and said, “Jake, any chance you can come by the office?”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “Ray, did you just have a couple guys pick up my nephew?”

  “Why the hell would I?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “So, this isn’t about Kip?”

  “I didn’t say that, Jake. It’s all about him.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Tobacco, Rum, and Bullshit

  Two men were smoking cigars and drinking rum on the rocks when I entered the office of the duly elected State Attorney, the chief prosecutor of our burg. The rum was Mount Gay Black Barrel from
Barbados. The chubby cigars were Cohiba Robusto Reserva from Cuba. They were finally legal in the U.S., though the Embargo Act never stopped Ray Pincher from buying, smoking, and giving them to pals when they were still contraband.

  “The Jakester!” Ray Pincher greeted me. “The guy who put the shy in shyster and took the fog out of pettifogger.”

  “That’s getting old, Sugar Ray,” I said.

  Pincher motioned me toward a cushy chair in front of his shiny mahogany desk. “Jake, you know Gilberto Foyo, right?”

  I nodded at the heavyset man of about 60, and he waved his Cohiba in greeting. He was the state attorney’s chief investigator, a relentless, pavement-pounding gumshoe of the old school. Foyo had little use for the young prosecutors he had to assist, baby lawyers who used the office as a trampoline to private practice.

  Pincher, now in his fifth four-year term as State Attorney, was a guy who knew where all the skeletons were buried, as well as who shoveled the dirt. He was one of the first African Americans elected to county-wide office in the state. We were friends and adversaries who both liked and were wary of each other. We fought each other, sometimes viciously, in court, then did favors for each other on the street.

  “Ray, what about my nephew?” I asked.

  “Gilberto has something for you but hold your horses.”

  “I got a snippet,” Foyo said, “el murmullo del viento, a whisper in the wind. Ain’t much.”

  “Well, what is it, for Chrissakes?” Another check mark on Melissa’s “irritability” box.

  “Relax, Jake,” Pincher said. “Stress is bad for you. You want a Cohiba?” He opened a handsome wooden box with cigars lined up like plump little soldiers asleep in their bunks. “Gift from a happy constituent, a hundred bucks a stick.”

  “No to the smoke,” I said, “but I’ll have some rum, neat. Maybe it’s a good chaser for radioactive isotopes.”

  Pincher poured me a drink, and I sensed the aroma of molasses and burnt oak. “Jake, how are you feeling?”

  “I’m great. Ready to go three rounds with you as soon as Gilberto tells me about Kip.”

  Pincher laughed and shadow-boxed, left jab, right jab, left hook. “It’s been bothering me, Jake. Our time in the ring. I hope it didn’t contribute to your problems.”

  “No worries, Ray.” I downed the sweet liquor in one swallow. “Getting hit in the nuts with a bolo punch doesn’t cause brain damage.”

  In truth, Pincher had rung my bell lots of times in our sparring sessions. Pretty embarrassing, since I outweighed him by a couple kegs of beer. Of course, he had been a decent middleweight boxer in Golden Gloves, giving rise to his nickname “Sugar Ray.” Boxing had been his ticket out of the Liberty City projects. Usually, the only way I could inflict damage was to put him in a headlock with my left arm and pound his face with my right fist. His response was to knee me in the groin. When we boxed, we did not invite the Marquess of Queensberry to observe.

  I turned to Foyo. “Gilberto, what the hell’s going on with my nephew?”

  He looked toward Pincher for the go-ahead.

  Pincher sailed a smoke ring into the ether and said, “We’ll share information with you, and whatever you learn thereafter, you’re gonna share with us.”

  “Jeez, Ray. Okay, just tell me about my nephew!”

  Pincher nodded, and Foyo began talking. He was the point man on a joint operation of the State Attorney’s office with the U.S. Justice Department. They were investigating a chain of opioid pill mills. Yesterday, Foyo paid a visit to the U.S. Attorney’s Office downtown to swap files. He delivered background workups on dirty doctors, and the feds gave Foyo a stack of transcripts of wiretapped recordings.

  “I start thumbing through the transcripts,” Foyo said. “Meanwhile, the A.U.S.A., some Ivy League kid, is multitasking, texting his hair stylist and asking whether I play squash ’cause he just ordered a custom-made graphite racket, or some such shit. The first couple transcripts were from pharmacists he’d had under surveillance. The next one stopped me.”

  He opened a small notebook, the kind old-school detectives use, and read aloud. “‘Covert recording of Chester Lassiter aka Kip Lassiter.’”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Instead of keeping quiet like I should have,” Foyo continued, “I blurted out something like, ‘What the hell’s this?’ The A.U.S.A. drops his cell phone and goes, ‘Whoops, that’s another case,’ and grabs the transcript.”

  “Shit on a shingle,” I said, elaborating on my earlier remark.

  “I remember your nephew from when you used to bring him to court,” Foyo said. “Quiet kid, big mop of hair falling in his eyes. Anyway, knowing that you and el jefe are buddies when you’re not whomping the tar out of each other, I told Ray, and here we are.”

  “Could you tell from the transcript who Kip was talking to?”

  “A guy named Max Ringle. You know him?”

  “Not yet, but I will. My nephew works for him.”

  “We know that now,” Pincher said. “Gilberto combed through Ringle’s website, plugged his name into all the law enforcement databases.”

  “Quest Educational Development,” I said.

  “Right,” Foyo said. “College admissions consultants. Office is in California, but they do business nationally. We’ve checked. No charges pending against Quest or Ringle or your nephew anywhere.”

  “Unless there are sealed indictments,” I added.

  “Got a hit on real estate, too,” Foyo said. “Ringle owns a condo on the fifty-first floor of the Bahamas Club on Brickell. Assessed at $2.3 million, probably worth more.”

  A new headache was piling on top of an old one, and I didn’t think it was the rum. “Kip lives in 5105,” I said. “Told me he was renting it, didn’t say from whom.”

  “Maybe a company perk,” Foyo suggested.

  “Sounds like your nephew didn’t share much about his boss,” Pincher said.

  “He told me Ringle was brilliant, a word he’s never used to describe me. It’s as if Kip’s found a new surrogate dad.”

  Quiet descended over us, along with a cloud of smoke. After a moment, I asked, “Gilberto, were you able to read anything before the A.U.S.A. grabbed the transcript?”

  “Only saw one line, your nephew talking. Seemed to be answering a question. He said, ‘Niles? Are you shitting me? He’s dumber than a Pitt nose tackle.’”

  My laugh was more rueful than joyous.

  “You know this Niles?” Pincher asked.

  “Nope. But I knew a couple Pitt defensive linemen. ‘Dumber than a Pitt nose tackle’ is an expression of mine from my days at Penn State.” I drained my rum. “So, my nephew, who disregards all my good advice, picks up my stupid juvenile badassery. Ray, you ever think about the damage we do to our kids without even knowing it?”

  “I’ve been lucky,” Pincher replied. “Paulette takes after her mother.”

  “Any idea what your nephew is talking about?” Foyo asked.

  I shrugged. “He’s putting somebody down, maybe another tutor or a student. Who knows? But why would the feds record Kip? Even assuming a tutoring service could commit federal crimes, wouldn’t the government use an employee to go after the owner, not vice versa?”

  “Sure, that’s the way the Justice Department prefers it,” Pincher said. “But when they can’t make a case against the big fish, it’s the other way around.”

  “Two men in suits escorted Kip out of the hospital today,” I said. “Now I’m thinking FBI agents or federal marshals.”

  “Most likely.” Pincher blew another smoke ring and watched it sail to the ceiling. “So, this is all news to you. Your nephew didn’t tell you anything or ask for your advice?”

  “Why would he? He’s 20 years old and knows everything.”

  Pincher allowed himself a knowing smile. “I got a petition from half a dozen of my youngest prosecutors,” Pincher said, “demanding an espresso machine in the break room.”

  “Entitled Yuppie brats,”
Foyo complained.

  “Gilberto, nobody says ‘Yuppie’ anymore,” Pincher said.

  “Try millennials,” I advised.

  “Or hipsters,” Pincher chimed in.

  “Like hippies?” Foyo asked, confused.

  “I like this,” Pincher said. “A black guy, a Cuban guy, and a Florida cracker sitting around, drinking booze and complaining about young people.”

  “I’m not a Florida cracker,” I corrected him.

  “Trailer park in the Florida Keys. Sorry, pal.”

  Foyo cleared his throat and said, “Something else popped up, Jake. In New Jersey. A sealed criminal file with your nephew’s social security number attached. What’s that about?”

  “Kip had a little problem at the Jersey shore when he went to Penn.”

  “Is that all you’re gonna say about it?” Pincher asked.

  “I promised him I wouldn’t blab all over town.”

  Pincher came around the desk and poured a refill of the rum. “I respect that.”

  “I owe you, Ray. Thanks for going beyond the call of duty . . . hell, for breaching some duties, to help me.”

  “So, you owe me one. You know me. I’ll collect.”

  I polished off the rum. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing. I just thought you’d want to know if the feds are sharpening their steak knives, and your nephew is a slice of rare tenderloin. I thought you’d be concerned.”

  “Concerned? I’m terrified because I have no idea what he’s gotten himself into, so I’m grateful for the information.”

  “But . . .?”

  “But you’re a political animal, Ray. You’re a pool shark who loves the double kiss bank shot.”

  “Whadaya mean, Jake?”

  “What’s your angle? What’s with the tobacco, rum, and bullshit?”

  “’Cause I know you. You’ll twist arms. You’ll break down doors. You’ll find out what’s going on downtown.”