Cortes then admitted that he didn't have the money with him. "I was angry with Jorge at this point," Scheeler told detectives later that afternoon. "He swore on his mother and he swore on this one and he swore on that one, and he didn't come up with any money." Scheeler told detectives that she overheard Cortes say he had $300,000 or $400,000 at SunTrust.
The three men got into Cortes' Impala and headed north on Jog Road, according to Argentieri's statement to detectives. Cortes maintains that the sequence of events beyond this point is fabricated, part of Argentieri's alleged plot to frame him for the murder of Ferayorni. At the intersection of Jog Road and Forest Hill Boulevard, Cortes turned into a strip mall that included a movie theater, a Publix, and a Walgreens. In the northeast section is a SunTrust, a white building with a Spanish tile roof. Cortes entered the parking lot south of the bank and turned off the car. Then he started up the engine again, Argentieri remembered.
Jeremy Eaton
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"I'm going to let it run," Argentieri recalled Cortes saying.
That's when it happened, according to Argentieri. Cortes pulled out his Bernardelli and shot Ferayorni, sending a bullet into the left side of the 45-year-old man's head. Cortes then turned, pointed the gun about two inches from Argentieri's face, and allegedly pulled the trigger once more, according to the surviving victim's account. "Boom, boom, just like that," Argentieri recalled in a taped statement to detectives. The bullet hit the man near the base of his jaw, the force pushing him onto the back seat.
Both victims lay motionless, Argentieri stated. Although he survived the gunshot, Argentieri said he played dead, fearing a second bullet from Cortes. The gunman then put the car in gear and drove out of the parking lot. At some point, Cortes apparently reached over Ferayorni and reclined the seat back to move the lifeless, bloodied body out of public view.
Then, about ten to 15 minutes later, according to Argentieri, Cortes shot himself in the right arm -- either accidentally or in an effort to make his moving crime scene look like a botched robbery. But Argentieri, regaining his strength, arose from the back seat and wrapped his arm around Cortes' neck. "He kept driving," Argentieri told detectives, "but hit curb after curb after curb. He says, 'Let me go, let me go. You're choking me, you're choking me. '"
"You son of a bitch," Argentieri told him. "We treated you like a kid."
"I didn't mean to do it," Argentieri recalled Cortes telling him. "I didn't kill you. I didn't want to kill you."
"Yeah," Argentieri answered, "you didn't kill me because you missed."
Jorge Cortes Jr. leans up against a wall in the inmate visiting room of the Main Detention Center of the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. His oversized blue uniform barely covers his large belly. Surrounding him are other inmates who scurry behind windows and phones as they look for loved ones on this Friday morning in August.
"You just made my weekend," Cortes tells New Times, leaning into the glass. "I'm innocent. I never shot them. Give me a lie-detector test."
Cortes has a round quarter-sized scar on his right biceps where a bullet entered his arm and remains. He continues to tell the story he gave detectives at JFK Medical Center on May 29. Reginald Argentieri and Richard Ferayorni, he says, are mobsters who set him up.
When the armed men approached the car, Cortes claims, he tried to reason with them after he'd handed over his Bernardelli 9mm. "They're going to fuck you," he says he told them, "because they fucked me. If they fucked me, they'll fuck you."
At that point, apparently believing that Argentieri and Ferayorni would double-cross them just as they'd allegedly double-crossed Cortes, one of the gunmen opened fire on the car, Cortes says. The shots killed Ferayorni and wounded Argentieri. A third bullet apparently entered Cortes' right arm. Then he swung his arm around, knocked the Bernardelli back into the car, and drove away.
On the way to the hospital, Cortes says, Argentieri told him to take them home and not go to the hospital. According to Cortes, Argentieri threatened him: Go to the hospital and I'll pin the murder on you. "Who do you think they're going to believe," Argentieri allegedly added, "a spic like you or a 70-year-old man?"
When they arrived at the hospital, Cortes explains, Argentieri was choking him because he didn't want to be taken to the emergency room. "How could I have shot them?" Cortes says. "They found .380 bullets. I own a 9mm." That doesn't mean much: In the car, investigators found Cortes' 9mm loaded with .380 rounds, according to the sheriff's report.
Cortes' attorney, Glenn H. Mitchell, echoes his client's story about Argentieri's and Ferayorni's being involved in mob activity. "Their last names end in vowels, don't they?" he says. Mitchell believes that the complicated nature of the case, involving multiple real estate deals and conflicting statements, will make it difficult for the state to prove Cortes' guilt. "There are many, many unanswered questions," Mitchell says. "It will probably take the better part of a year until we get to the bottom."
