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.”