Chapter 41
Jack cleared his Friday morning calendar and drove straight from his house on Key Biscayne to the pre-trial detention center.
It had taken nearly eighteen hours for the warden’s office to inform Jack of an “incident” involving his client. The guard
at the reception desk delivered the message he expected.
“Inmate Stafford doesn’t want to meet with you.”
Jack spent the next two hours in the warden’s office. The prison doctor confirmed that Elliott’s injuries were not life-threatening
and that a trip to the hospital was unnecessary. Jack demanded to see the surveillance video, from which the assailants were
clearly identifiable: Elliott’s cellmate, who was now in solitary confinement, and Elliott’s mother, who was being shipped
out to Lowell for disciplinary measures. The video revealed one other key fact: Another cellmate had been in the top bunk
directly across from Elliott the whole time. She’d never moved.
Around ten o’clock, Jack returned to the visitors’ reception desk.
“I want to see Shondra Mosely,” Jack said, meaning the potential witness.
“You’re wasting your time,” the guard said. “Mosely already told us she slept through the whole thing. Didn’t see a thing.”
“Maybe she’ll tell me something different.”
The guard shook his head, as if Jack were na?ve. “No way you or anyone else is going to get her to snitch on the biggest badass
bitch in the joint. And I don’t mean Elliott Stafford’s mother.”
“Tell Shondra that Theo Knight is here to see her.”
“Who?”
“Tatum Knight’s brother. He was the founding father of the Grove Lords.”
“So?”
“I checked out Shondra’s mug shot. If that tattoo on her neck is authentic, she’s also a Grove Lord. Tatum is dead, of course,
like most of the old Grove Lords. But Theo is alive and well. That’s him sitting right over there.”
Jack pointed across the lobby with a jerk of his head. Theo checked back with what Jack surmised was an old Grove Lord hand
signal.
“I’m sure Shondra wouldn’t want word to get around that she disrespected the last living Knight Brother,” said Jack.
The guard chuckled under his breath. “Good luck with that, counselor. I’ll tell her Mr. ‘Knight-of-the-Living-Dead’ is here.”
“I’ll need an attorney-client meeting room,” said Jack.
“You’re not her attorney.”
“I am for the purposes of this meeting,” said Jack.
“Criminal lawyers,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “You people all deserve each other. Fine. You can have a room.”
The desk officer picked up the phone and called for Shondra. Another guard led Jack and Theo through a set of locked doors
and left them alone in a private room at the end of the hall. They sat beside each other on one side of the rectangular table.
An empty chair waited on the other side.
“You think she’ll come down?” asked Theo.
“She’s a Grove Lord,” said Jack. “I know she will.”
The original Grove Lords hailed from the ghetto side of Coconut Grove.
Back in the day, when Theo’s older brother Tatum ruled the streets, Coconut Grove was a world of “haves and have-nots,” where some of Miami’s most expensive residential real estate and exclusive shopping butted up against run-down bars, crack houses, and other places that rich white people visited only to service their addictions and prurient interests.
Tatum Knight—“Assassin,” they called him—had become a Grove Lord legend by the age of sixteen.
Theo had shown little interest in the Grove Lords, their stupid backward caps with the price tags dangling from the bill, and their even stupider Mercedes-Benz hood ornaments on thick gold neck chains.
Theo was known mainly as the underachieving little brother—until he was arrested and convicted of the brutal murder of a convenience store clerk and became the youngest inmate on Florida’s death row.
With that, the Knight brothers reached almost mythical street cred.
The door opened, and a guard escorted Shondra into the room. Jack and Theo rose, but she ignored their attempt at a greeting.
The guard stepped out, the door closed, and Shondra settled into the chair with her arms folded tightly across her chest.
She ignored Jack and looked straight at Theo.
“You Tatum’s little brother, huh?”
“That’s right,” said Theo.
“Hmm. Better-lookin’ than I thought you was,” she said, and then her gaze fixed on his neck. “But where’s your Grove Lord
tattoo?”
“Got it removed.”
She touched the ink on her neck and smiled. “I like mine.”
“You wear it well,” said Theo.
“Thank you. There’s a prettier one on the way to the pink taco, if you’re interested.”
“Sorry, no tacos till Tuesday,” said Jack, as he leaned onto the table. “Today, we’re here for one thing, Shondra: What did
you see from the top bunk yesterday when Elliott’s mother came by to visit?”
“Didn’t see nothin’,” she said.
“You were in your bunk, right?”
“Yup. Minding my own business. Elliott probably didn’t even know I was there.”
“Elliott was yanked out of his bunk and thrown onto the floor feet away from you. Mona spent five minutes drilling her knee
into his back while his mother stood over him. And you didn’t see anything?”
“Just like I told the guards. Didn’t see nothin’.”
“What did you hear?” asked Theo.
Shondra smiled at him. “Cute and smart. Guards didn’t ask me that question. Neither did you, Mr. Smarty-Pants Lawyer. I heard Elliott’s momma talking. That’s what I heard.”
“What did his mother say?”
“You don’t know what she said?”
“No,” said Jack. “Elliott won’t talk to me, and there’s no audio on the surveillance video.”
“Yeah, I had the same problem when they showed me that video,” she said. “It looked like his momma was talking for a while.
But I was asleep for most of it. I didn’t wake up till they was almost done. I could hear Elliott groaning, but I knew better
than to look till they was gone. All I heard was the last thing she said.”
Jack knew exactly which part of the video she was referencing. “You’re talking about when the two of them walked out. Elliott’s
mother said something to Mona that made her laugh.”
“Right.”
“You heard what she said?”
“That’s right.”
“What did she say?”
Shondra glanced at Theo, then back at Jack. “Her exact words were, ‘Now I got CJ by the hairy balls.’”
Jack froze, but his mind was in overdrive. The connection between Serena and CJ had been surprising enough. The power dynamic
in that relationship changed Jack’s thinking entirely.
Jack walked across the room to the intercom, asked the guard to open the door, and stepped out into the hall.
“I need to get a message to my client,” said Jack.
“Okay,” said the guard. “What’s the message?”
“Tell Elliott we’re going back before the judge on Monday morning. I’m taking one last shot to get him out of this place.”
Theo went back to Cy’s Club, worked behind the bar through happy hour, and got the musicians ready for their first set.
At nine o’clock, he left his manager in charge, drove to the foreign trade zone near the port, and parked in the alley alongside his warehouse space.
It was a scheduled meeting, and technically Theo had “agreed” to it, but the annoying voice of his new “business partner” still made his blood boil.
“Evening, cousin,” Baptiste said in his Haitian accent. He was standing outside the side-entrance door halfway down the alley.
Another man was with him, but it wasn’t one of the Haitians from the last time. This guy was white, built like a weightlifter,
and almost as tall as Theo.
“Who’s he?” asked Theo.
“Elton John,” the man said. “What the fuck’s it to you who I am?”
Theo noticed the footlocker at his feet but didn’t waste his breath asking what was in it.
“I see you fixed the lock, cousin,” said Baptiste. “You gonna let us in or make us break it open again?”
Theo unlocked the door with his key and let them inside. They walked through the office to the storage area. Elton John set
his footlocker on the floor and opened it. Theo tried not to be obvious about it, but he saw something a little different
from what he was expecting.
“Those are guns,” he said, putting his confusion to words.
“Don’t act so surprised,” said Baptiste.
Theo had been expecting only gun parts. Either Baptiste’s source at VanPoll Enterprises was rerouting confiscated weapons before they could be “destroyed” at the
plant, or someone was reconstructing fully operational firearms from the salvaged gun parts.
“Go ahead, take a good look, cousin,” said Baptiste. “That’s the whole point of this meeting. We’re having a planning session
at your warehouse, and you’ve seen with your own eyes what’s going to fill those empty barrels. There’s also a footlocker
full of cash on its way to Cy’s Club. So don’t even think about trying to tell Customs and Border Protection you got forced
into this. You’re in up to your eyeballs now.”
Elton John closed the lid on the footlocker.
Baptiste continued. “We’ve done the geometry. Each barrel can hold eight footlockers. You got till Monday morning to have the paperwork done for the shipment of twenty barrels of ‘gin,’” he said with air quotes, “to the Dominican Republic.”
The DR made sense. It shared a border with Haiti on the island of Hispaniola. It was easy enough to slip just about anything
through Haiti’s eleven hundred miles of lightly patrolled coastline, and it was even easier to run guns through the side door.
“Did you hear me, cousin? I want that paperwork done by Monday morning.”
“Yeah,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’ll have it.”