by Josh Karnes
Chapter 18
Isla de Vieques, Puerto Rico
Before the sun was all the way up Tuesday morning, the Gradys had split from their hotel. The search was on in full. Melissa took a taxi again to the police station while the guys walked the short distance to the marina with Eli’s list of dive operators on their itinerary.
The first two tour companies they talked to were already booked up for the day and could not help them. They were beginning to feel desperate when they talked to the third, SCUBA Blanca.
“Señor, I am afraid all of our boats are booked today with group tours,” the young lady with the clipboard informed them when they inquired about renting a boat and hiring a guide from SCUBA Blanca.
Just as they were about to run to the next, and last, operator on the list, Eli chimed in, “You said all of your boats are booked. Are there any guides available we can hire? Maybe we can rent a boat separately.” Why hadn’t they thought of asking that before?
“Unfortunately, we do not have tour guides here today except the ones who are leading a tour.”
“But we are not doing a diving tour,” James corrected. “We just need someone familiar with these small islands and Fajardo who can take us to them while we look for something. Is there someone like that you know who we could hire for the day?”
“Well, maybe there is somebody I can call. But you will need to rent a boat, and they are very expensive.”
“That’s not a problem. Call your friend, and then we can find a boat.”
She retrieved a cell phone from beneath the counter, and dialed a number. She spoke briefly in Spanish and then hung up the phone. “Luis, the owner of this company, will help you. He will be here in just a few minutes.” She pointed down the row of shop fronts and said, “While you are waiting, the man under the yellow awning there may have a boat you can rent. He is Luis’s cousin.”
“Gracias,” Mark said, exercising his Spanish, which sounded much too Texan.
“Eli, stay here with your brother and wait for Luis. I will go see about getting us a boat,” James instructed as he turned to leave for the yellow awning.
About a half hour passed and the three Grady men were underway aboard Luis Blanca’s cousin’s outboard-equipped 1980s ski boat with Luis at the helm. This boat was hardly ideal for diving but Luis assured them that if they had to take a quick dive, it would suffice. He had also loaded up two SCUBA rigs, one for himself and one for Eli, in the event they needed to take a look under the water. They quickly made for the Puerto Rico coastline at the southern end of Fajardo. James instructed Luis that they were not sightseeing, and time was of the essence. Luis pressed the throttle all the way forward and they were off.
They had at least a half hour of travel time to the coast, and Mark chose this time to get some answers from his father. “So what’s the big deal, dad? I mean, we get it, you did some foreign trading deal and made a ton of money, and now mom’s mad at you and we have to have some crazy vacation to try and fix it. I don’t get it.”
James really didn’t want to get into this right now. He was trying to hold his guilt under the surface, and Mark seemed determined to dig it up. He was completely responsible for this whole mess. Had it not been for what he had done, they would have not needed to come down here to Puerto Rico to sort things out. And even if they wanted to, they couldn’t afford it. They would be doing some lousy vacation at Galveston or something close to home, and be happy but broke. But instead James had to try and fix everything on his own and now his son was missing, and it was all his fault.
“Mark, let’s just focus on getting your brother back with us, okay?” James pleaded.
“But we’re kind of rich now, right? So why is mom mad about it?”
“Mom is mad because dad didn’t involve her in his scheme. He went and did it on his own and then sprung it on her. She’s taking it a little too far, but I can kind of see her point,” Eli explained while James leaned back in the bench and tried to make this all just go away.
The boys didn’t know the half of it. At first, Melissa had been mostly upset that James had done this without her. She felt betrayed, like he broke her trust. They were a team and he did this deal with Tim, and that was like a slap in the face to her. On the other hand, it had worked and it sure helped with their financial situation.
“But you’d think mom would be happy that dad used a clever system that he came up with to make a ton of money,” Mark said to Eli.
“Yeah, you’d think. But women are more complicated than that,” Eli explained.
No, Eli, the situation is more complicated than that, James thought. In January, months after they had done their arbitrage deal, Tim got a 1099 tax form in the mail from the broker. In retrospect, James realized just how foolish they had been to do this deal without thinking about the consequences. The account had been in Tim’s name and the form said that he was on the hook for nearly seven hundred thousand dollars in taxes. Now, this was nearly a third of the money Tim had from the deal and he didn’t plan on paying it, especially since the money was already out of reach of the IRS in an offshore account.
Tim filed for a few extensions and then before his time ran out, he disappeared. He went off the grid. James didn’t know where he went and didn’t want to know, but he assumed that Tim fled to somewhere where the IRS couldn’t find him. James didn’t try and contact him. At the beginning of this year, a warrant had been issued for Tim’s arrest.
James was certain Tim wouldn’t tell them about his involvement, even if they caught him. But he didn’t want Tim to go to jail over something that they both owed. Technically, only Tim owed the taxes. James first rationalized this, told himself he didn’t owe any of the taxes. But he soon realized that this made him an employee of Tim’s, as if he was hired to write the script and the two million dollars was his compensation. This was much worse since that meant that James owed income taxes on this money, some forty percent.
So while James had told himself that this whole thing may have not been illegal to start, the tax evasion was definitely illegal.
Certainly Melissa had also figured this out. She was a sharp lady. But she had never brought it up with James. Deep down, maybe she was just as conflicted as James was, and didn’t want to openly deal with her own corruption. Easier to blame James if she never bothered to try and remedy it. But if she had brought it up, then she’d be accountable for not turning themselves in. It was denial, but it was working so far.
“Guys, there’s really a lot to this that you don’t know about. Your mother is upset for very good reasons. But we need to figure out how to make our family work.”
“What ever happened with your partner, what was his name?” Eli asked. “You know, the guy who thought of this idea to start with.”
“I don’t know. Tim and I don’t talk anymore. I haven’t heard from him in a year,” James said what was true enough, but not completely honest.
“Why did you even have to do it? We weren’t in that much trouble,” Eli asked.
“Yes, we were. We had to do something, and this was the best thing I could think of. I thought it was going to help. I had no idea how it would end up.”
“I could have kept my job, worked to help pay for school. We could have made it work.”
“No, Eli. It’s not just your school. We owed a lot of money to this guy Greer who sued me before. We didn’t really talk about it that much. And both of your brothers were coming up on college. You can’t possibly make enough working part time to pay for it all, and do you think you would have graduated with honors if you were having to wait tables instead of studying your junior and senior years?”
“Maybe I could—”
“No, you couldn’t. Trust me. It’s a lot harder than you think.”
“I just don’t think it was all worth it,” Mark said.
“Mark, I’m going to tell you the same thing I told your mom yesterday when she said the same thing. You are right. If I knew what I know now, I w
ould not have done it. But I can’t go back and fix it. What’s done is done. We have to figure out a way to move forward,” James said firmly. “Look, we need to get serious about finding your brother. This problem with me and your mom is nothing compared with Joseph.”
“Okay, dad,” Mark said. James’ oldest sons wanted to trust their dad. They wanted to look up to him. They wanted to forgive him for whatever this was and get on with it. But if it had led to Joey’s disappearance, and if they couldn’t find him, then there was no way they would be able to.
