The better I got to know my victim, however, the easier it was to rationalize. Myles possessed a mountainous ego that didn’t leave room for a conscience, or a heart, or people of value in his tiny, privileged world.
Now it was 9:15 p.m. Traffic was busy on Palmetto Road, as I turned south and crossed Bee Ridge. I was listening to Myles once again attempt to justify murdering a thirteen-year-old girl the summer of his senior year at Yale.
“She was a tease-you can ask anyone who knew Annie. Thirteen going on twenty-one, you’ve met the type. I was just a kid myself. Drunk, and I’d smoked grass, and it was the first time I’d ever snorted coke. I was celebrating because I’d been accepted into a very elite fraternity. Next morning, I couldn’t remember anything. Don’t expect me to remember every detail now.”
“Don’t expect me not to expect,” I said.
“It’s a manner of speech. I’m trying to explain how it happened. Little bits and pieces flash back, but never in order, so I’ve got to stitch it together even for me to understand. It was night, and I was on the beach alone. I’d been at a party and got too drunk, but I was smart enough to leave. The party was getting dangerous: a bunch of locals with an attitude had showed up. So I took a bucket of balls and a golf club down to the beach to hit a few while I sobered up.
“A driver?” I said.
He thought for a moment. “No, an iron. A seven iron.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
I was picturing the golf bag I’d seen in Norvin Tomlinson’s room, as he told me, “Next thing I remember, Annie was standing in front me. This was in June, a warm night. She’d just gotten out of the water. She was wearing a white T-shirt, no bra, and bikini shorts. How would you react?”
I didn’t answer. There was a stoplight ahead and I wanted to time it right. I’d used the master switch to lock all the doors but wasn’t certain there was an override on the passenger side. If I slowed to a stop, he might try to jump.
“Women never do that sort of thing accidentally,” he said. “I don’t care if they’re thirteen or thirty.” The man buried has face in his hands and made a groaning sound. “My God… there ought to be a law.”
I said, “There is, ” not hiding my contempt.
“But the girl started it! She wanted me to make a pass at her. When I finally did, though, she laughed and ran, so I threw the goddamn club… like a joke, you know, to scare her. It’s what kids that age do. Jesus!”
“Twenty-one years old,” I said, “and still a boy.”
He missed the sarcasm. “ Exactly. I didn’t mean to hurt her. But she turned her head and the club hit her in the eye. I got scared. Even she didn’t realize how bad it was. There was a lot of blood and I panicked. Anyone would’ve freaked out in that situation. Plus, I had my family’s reputation to protect. Father was about to be named ambassador to-”
I said, “Nelson!” He was on a talking jag and didn’t hear me. “Myles!” When he was listening, I said, “What’s par for killing a girl? How many strokes? After the second time you hit her, you claim she called you a name. What did she do to deserve it the third time? The fourth?”
“You don’t understand how it was.”
I said, “You’re goddamn right I don’t understand.”
Myles looked out the window and rubbed his swollen ear. “I’m getting sick of your questions.”
“Try a dose of truth. It might help.”
“I’ve told you everything I remember. It was a long time ago. The boy who was on the beach that night doesn’t even exist. I’m not responsible, he was responsible. I’m a different person now.”
I said, “Prove it. The girl’s dead, but maybe you can help me save the boy. Find him alive, it’ll earn you points with the jury.”
“How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t know anything about the kid. I told you about Annie. Why wouldn’t I tell you where the boy is?”
“Maybe you know more than you think. The Cuban could’ve said something that meant nothing to you but might make sense to me.”
“Really? You’re that much smarter? I find that unlikely. Know what I think?” I waited. “I think you know more than you’re admitting. Why are you so sure the man is Cuban? You expect me to talk but don’t share anything.”
I replied patiently, “Tell me the story again. Start at the beginning-every detail.”
He groaned. “Just take me home. I feel like I’m going to vomit. And I need a shower. I’ve never felt so filthy in my life. Take me back to Falcon Landing, maybe I’ll feel better. We can talk there.”
It was a typical reaction for an assault victim. It was also a symptom. The rich man’s brain was reassembling his self-image, piece by piece, as he transitioned through predictable stages. He had been apologetic, then ingratiating. Pride, indignation and anger would reboot next. Myles would become increasingly contentious or closemouthed. I had to short-circuit that process. There was more I wanted to know.
I shifted lanes, looking for a place to turn around, then flicked the turn signal.
“What are you doing?”
I said, “Taking you back.”
“Not to that goddamn dirt road!”
“I should’ve done what they hired me to do.”
Myles slapped the dash, then leaned his head on his forearms. “Jesus Christ! Haven’t I been through enough? It would be easier if you asked questions. Instead, you just sit there hardly saying a word. You do it on purpose. You know it drives me crazy.”
I said, “When you stack the lies high enough, they’ll implode. That’s when I ask questions.”
“Go to hell,” he said, but got serious when he realized I was still slowing to turn.
“ Jesus! Okay, I’ll tell the story again. But who the hell do you think you are, treating me this way? Do you have any idea who I am?”
I said, “Let me guess: You’re rich and you know a lot of powerful people.”
“An understatement. You have no idea.”
“Guys like you,” I said, baiting him, “you’re all the same. You lie to feel important. Next, you’ll start bragging about all the sports stars and famous politicians you know. Buddies from some yacht club or some rich-kid fraternity who can bury me if you just say the word.” My tone told him Bullshit, but I didn’t hit it too hard. I wanted him to talk about Skull and Bones.
Myles said, “If I told you how many senators and presidents that’re in my fraternity, you wouldn’t believe me.”
I replied, “Then don’t bother.”
He was shaking his head, letting me know how dense I was. “My beach house where you jumped me? Three neighbors are from the same fraternity. One’s a federal judge, one’s on the board of the International Bank and the other’s a leading member of Congress. That’s who you’re dealing with. Now do you understand?”
I asked, “A congressman? What’s the name?’ ”
His reply was a snorting noise of refusal.
“Fraternity boys,” I said, “secret handshakes and drinking songs. Big deal.
Nels, you’re the guy who’s going to start at the beginning of the story and not stop until you get to the end.”
He made a blowing sound of frustration, his temper rallying, but he did what I told him to do. This time, he added a few key details.
Two weeks before, Myles had received the first of several anonymous phone calls. Adult male, Spanish accent: the Cuban interrogator. The Cuban claimed he knew what had happened to Annie Sylvester. Then he proved it by providing details that couldn’t have been gathered from an old police report.
The Cuban demanded that Myles send him a quarter million dollars U.S., converted into euros, to a Havana address through DSL, an international carrier. He wanted the money sent in three separate packages to increase the odds of at least one package arriving. If Myles didn’t cooperate, the Cuban told him, he would send a letter telling police exactly where to find the girl’s body.
“He told me I would never hear from him ag
ain if I paid,” Myles said in a monotone to let me know how tiresome this was. “But I’m not stupid. I’ve been through it before and I knew he’d want more. But I assumed it would be money, not helping him commit a felony.”
We were on East Venice Road, a quiet four-lane lined with sable palms. Manatee Civic Center and Desoto Square Mall were to the north, the entrance to Falcon Landing only a few miles away.
“You’re almost home,” I told him. “Keep talking.”
Five days ago, Myles continued, on January twentieth-two days before the kidnapping-the Cuban telephoned again. This time, it was from a pay phone in the United States, a 305 area code-Miami. Myles said he’d checked.
The Cuban said that he and a couple of friends would be arriving on Long Island-at Shelter Point Stables-in two days. They had purchased a crate of illegal weapons and had found a buyer, but the timing had to be right. Because there was a chance the boat they were meeting might not show, the Cuban told Myles he wanted a pit dug where he could cache the weapons until later. He also told him to have his plane fueled and ready in case they needed to fly out fast.
The pit the Cuban ordered dug was to be six by eight feet and six feet deep-Will Chaser’s grave. When Myles told him it would draw less attention if the pit was big enough for a horse, the man said that would be okay.
“By then,” Myles said, “I think he was already worried about how they were going to get out of the country. It was just a feeling I had. His English wasn’t great, but he mentioned me being a pilot often enough to make me suspicious. But I didn’t want to do anything to piss him off, so I humored him. You know, so he would trust me. Digging the hole he wanted was no problem.
“We had an old gelding that had to be put down, so I told my stable manager to schedule a backhoe. I told him to have our contractor dig two holes on the far side of the pasture.”
It was the first time Myles had mentioned the backhoe or his manager, or that one of the Cubans was worried about how they were getting out of the U.S. I had not asked for the same reason I hadn’t asked who’d shot the expensive stallion. Questions can give more information than they provide.
“You told him the holes were for graves,” I said.
“Yes,” Myles said, drumming his fingers on the dash. “It’s what we do when animals die: bury them. But the other hole was for the guns-or whatever it was he was bringing. The Cuban said it’s what they did in the Middle East to hide weapons, bury them. Which made sense to me. It’s on TV all the time.”
“One old horse, two graves. Did your manager ask why?”
Myles said, “When I give an order, I don’t wait for questions. Oh
… there’s something else: The Cuban said they would arrive at the stable late Thursday. He didn’t want anyone else on the property. So I told my manager to go into town Thursday night and get drunk. But I didn’t tell him or anyone else I was returning to the Hamptons.”
I said, “You ordered him to get drunk.”
“No, but I knew he would. I spent the previous two nights in Asheville-our family keeps a place there-and landed at the Hamptons jetport around ten p.m., expecting to meet the Spanish-speaking guys at my farm. But the head man called and said something had happened to screw up their plans. He told me I should wait at the landing strip. So I did.”
I had to ask: “On the plane?”
He made a gesture of indifference. “Why not? I own it, along with a couple of pilot associates. No one there but a security cop at the gate.”
I didn’t believe him. I thought it was more likely that Myles had either returned to his farm and met with the Cubans or he’d rendezvoused with Roxanne at some secret meeting place, the Tomlinson estate possibly.
“Then what happened?”
“Around eleven Friday morning, my manager called me on the cell and told me someone had broken into one of the stables and shot our best stallion. I hadn’t heard from the Cubans, so I thought, shit, they did it. But the Cuban called about an hour later and said no way, he had nothing to do with it. The police, he said, were crawling all over the place. Why would they cause trouble, give the police a reason to search, when they were sitting there with a crateful of illegal weapons? He said they’d found a good place to hide and that we would leave as soon as it was safe.”
As the man talked, I was making mental notes, saving my questions until later. “Keep going,” I said.
“I expected the police to take a couple of hours at most. But I found out later that a couple of low-rung bureaucrats had somehow managed to get a signed search warrant, nothing I could do. They brought the thing I mentioned earlier, the ground-penetrating radar. My idiot manager had gone back to town and was drunk again.”
I didn’t want him to see how pleased I was. I had screwed up their plans, maybe bought the boy more time.
Myles said he didn’t hear from the Cubans until about after midnight. During that phone conversation, the head man said he wanted Myles to fly them to a safe place outside the U.S., preferably near Havana. It was the first he’d mentioned it.
“I told them I couldn’t. I said my plane didn’t have that kind of range, which wasn’t true. But the main problem was that a private plane can’t leave the country, even to Canada, without filing the proper flight plan. I tried to explain to him that we would be tracked. Leave the country and no matter where we go, someone would be waiting when we landed. I didn’t think it would come as such a surprise, but the guy was furious. He acted like he’d been set up in some way and tried to blame me.”
I said, “Most kidnappers aren’t fussy about FAA regulations.”
“No, but they worry about who meets them when they get off the plane. There aren’t many truly private jetports in the country-that’s why I bought at Falcon Landing. There’s nothing like it in Canada, or Cuba either, judging from the man’s reaction. I realized he hadn’t been lying about expecting a boat. I don’t know how he was supposed to make contact, but someone stood up him and his partner-as of this morning anyway.”
Myles told me that when the Cuban finally decided he was telling the truth, he started asking questions. Did Myles know anyone in Florida who owned a big boat? Or an amphibious plane? And what about an airstrip in the Bahamas?
“I told him I would check my aviation charts,” Myles said, “but I was lying: The Lear team took my plane to Miami this afternoon, in fact, for servicing. So then they focused on finding a boat.
“Somehow, the man already knew I keep a sixty-eight-foot Tiara at the marina, but he decided the boat was too big. They didn’t have a lot of experience on the water-that’s my impression. My stable manager, though-sometimes he uses one of our guest cottages-my manager owns a thirty-four-foot cabin cruiser and docks it next to my boat, which is embarrassing-a junker, you know?
“But all I wanted to do was get rid of those two, so I told them the cabin cruiser was great, it had huge range and where to find the keys. That was this morning, around six a.m., still dark. The Cubans were on the tarmac, the last time I saw them. I just walked away.”
I said, “Did you tell them where to find the keys to your boat?”
“I never tell anyone where to find the keys to my boat.”
“Then you’re sure they took the smaller boat?”
“Why should I care?” Myles snapped. “I thought I was done with the whole business… until you came along.”
In my mind, I was comparing this version of the story with earlier versions, as Myles said, “My manager lost more than his damn ugly little boat. He doesn’t realize it, but he’s about to be fired.”
I was picturing the Cubans aboard some junk cruiser, browsing through local charts, seeing hundreds of islands, and Havana Harbor two hundred miles to the south. “You sound heartbroken,” I replied.
“No, I’ll enjoy it. The man sees himself as some kind of blue-collar hero. When he really is a know-it-all jerk.” Myles gave it a few beats, then decided to test my boundaries. “You and my stable manager have a lot in common. You’
d probably hit it off.”
I replied, “Maybe I’ll come visit one day.”
“Sure, I can see it-two macho guys bragging about their scars, having fun talking about guns. Stop for a few beers after work, then go bowling on Sundays. Real buddies, I can almost guarantee it.” From the corner of my eye, I could see the man staring at me.
“You have something against people who work for a living?”
“See? That’s exactly the sort of thing he would say. No, I don’t. But men like you have something against men like me, men who are successful, who make a difference in the world. That’s how you and my manager are similar. I can understand how galling that must be because there’s really nothing you can do to improve yourselves. It’s not your fault. Genetics-‘paralyzing the hope of reform,’ as Bryan put it. Do you know who I’m talking about?”
I said, “No,” thinking, William Jennings Bryan, Scopes trial.
Myles, the Ivy Leaguer, said, “ High heritability: Do you have any idea what that means? It has to do with genetics. Human IQs. It applies to animal husbandry, too.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding,” he smiled. “I’m not criticizing, mind you. It’s an observation. We don’t choose our parents or our social class. People like you, and the people who work for me, you’re all a type. There are a lot of mutts out there and not many purebreds.”
I was picturing Roxanne Sofvia, her expression of hurt and surprise, as he added, “Nothing wrong with either one. Sort of like horses: Some are champions, others pull plows. I think you know where you fit in.” Now the man’s ego was rallying. “No offense,” he said.
I replied, “Just being in the same car with you, Nels, is offensive enough.”
The man had a sly, bitter way of laughing as he spoke. “Funny! What a big night it must be for you, having power over someone like me. For a short time anyway.”
I said, “I think of it as being immunized against a personality disorder: assholishness. ”
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