“I didn’t do anything for you.”
“Oh, I know that. Young Virgil just set you out and let you hunt ’em up. You flushed every bird. Nice work.”
“Virgil? Was he part of this?” I said.
“No, not at all. This was my work, though it was Selena who came to me. We made an arrangement.”
“She wanted revenge on her husband for cheating.”
“Not quite. The cheating didn’t bother her as much as the fact that he made that woman pregnant. She couldn’t get pregnant, you know about that?” he said.
“I suspected.”
“The grandfather. Nasty old piece of work. He raped her. Repeatedly. Then forced her to have an abortion, and that ended up ruining her chances of ever getting pregnant again. Pushing his drunken ass off that cliff was much too good for him. I would’ve given him to Hector for a day or two first. Hector worked with the contras in Nicaragua as a young man. He’s slowed down some, but I doubt he’s lost his touch.”
“She pushed him?”
“Certainly. Not much later, the two Nassau County detectives who were in charge of the investigation both retired early. Now they both live in a gated, luxury community in Costa Rica, thanks to Selena’s largesse.”
“So why didn’t she kill her husband, too?” I asked.
“I don’t think she wanted him dead. She just wanted to take him down a few pegs. Break his spirit. She thought she could tame him.”
“Why did she come to you?”
“Well, she needed help, the kind I can provide, and she knew I wanted to buy out the rest of the company. Only not at the going price.” He snickered, quite proud of his plotting. “We agreed that I would buy her out in a private transaction at current levels. After Haley got into trouble, the stock would tank and I could pick up a lot more shares at a nice discount. I did warn her, you know.”
“About Haley?”
“I told her she was shooting fireworks in a hand grenade factory. Eventually, there was going to be hell to pay.”
“You were there that night. Is this the car I saw on the security tapes?” I asked.
“Oh yes. But she was alive when I left. But then, you know that, don’t you? No one will believe it, of course. But you know Haley killed her.”
“He set the cameras to fail before he left, drove to the marina, and came back in the boat. The same way as he did the other night. Then he killed her and tossed her over the rail.” I couldn’t prove it, but I knew it.
“And when he got out on bail, he doctored the pictures of the license plate to put the blame on Penn.”
“You knew? That computer is sitting in one hundred feet of seawater. No one will ever be able to prove it wasn’t Penn that night.”
“Which suits me just fine. I’ve already made arrangements with the son to buy out Penn’s stake in Arinna.”
“What happened that night? When you went out to the house?”
He leaned back into the seat and closed his eyes for a moment. “Selena called me all in a lather. Told me to stay away. But I had my people hack into Haley’s email and got his password. Then Hector drove me out there. She was sure you’d scoped out the whole game and we were going down. She was a mite agitated, but she convinced me.” He opened his eyes and turned his head toward me. “There was nothing for it, then, but to take you out of the game. As I say, it wasn’t personal, it was business. Just business.”
“I hid my family.”
“And you did a fine job of it, I’m sure of it. But I have to tell you, they were never in danger. I understand why you had to do it. I would have done the same.”
“I watched my ex-wife get murdered while protecting our son, and all because of me.”
“I don’t think that’s a healthy way of looking at it, if you don’t mind me playing uncle for a bit.”
“I had in my hands the very thing those men wanted. A few hours earlier, and there would have been no attack.”
“You’re not a religious man, are you?” he said, almost kindly. “I didn’t think so. One subject the secular humanists always avoid is the question of evil. There is evil in this world. I don’t mean original sin. That’s just a way of forcing some humility and guilt on the flock. No, I mean Satan. Pure evil. Ted Bundy. Dahmer. That Mexican—the Zetas fella they finally caught up with. You didn’t kill your ex-wife, and you did your best to prevent it. That’s all any of us can do.”
Letting go of my guilt was harder than living with it. I was comfortable there, being angry at myself.
“What about you?” I said.
“I doubt very much that I will see my late wife in the glorious hereafter, and I imagine she will take that disappointment in stride. I have looked into your history, and I believe that you are a man who can be bought. You frown. Am I wrong? Forgive me. I spoke with a man in Venezuela—an acquaintance of yours—who assured me that you are one of those rare men who can be bought and stay that way. Was I misinformed?”
The Kid’s trust fund, which paid for his school, his doctors, therapist, and Heather, would not exist if I had not sold my silence. I had no qualms about that—it was worth all that and more. But there was another cache that I had squirreled away in Switzerland that sometimes gnawed away at my conscience.
“I’m well paid. I don’t need more.”
“I could use someone with your skills and I would pay better than Virgil—I know your arrangement. This is why I came to see you today. I am willing to answer any question you have—honestly—because I want you working with me. You could name your price.”
He could afford honesty—he knew no one would easily believe me. Even Brady and Virgil would have a hard time after I had worked so hard to build a case against Penn. “Tell me why you wanted so badly to buy Arinna. It’s all yours now, but without Haley to run that lab, there’s no product. It’s worthless.”
“Maybe not. Haley solved all of the big problems. The rest is fine-tuning.”
“So you’re not going to close it down?”
“Oh, no. I will close it down. That’s the point. I’m an oilman, Jason. Oil may be past its prime, but it’s still got legs. When the time is right, I’ll still own all the patents on Haley’s product. I may yet bring Arinna back. But not yet.”
“Suppose someone beats you to it?”
“No one has beaten me yet. I don’t know if it’s possible. But if it is, and somebody does it, well, God bless ’em. That’s the American way.”
“And in the meantime we keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere. Believe me, I never give it much thought, but when I do, I think it’s pretty obvious we are seriously screwing with the environment. Someday soon we are going to have to pay the piper.”
“Global warming? I spend a lot of money each year supporting research to prove that it’s just a myth.” He laughed. “It’s just like all those studies that Big Tobacco used to do, proving that tobacco wasn’t bad for you. They had to keep funding them just to muddy the waters. But I’m no idiot. The science is there. The earth is warming up, and it is only going to get worse, and it’s all because of man’s lust for fossil fuels.”
“Then why perpetuate it? Even for a minute? Fix the bugs in Haley’s system and you’ll be the man who saved the planet.”
“Don’t think there aren’t reasons. I’m no hero, that’s true, and I don’t think I could change if I tried. But there are reasons.”
“Do I take that on faith?”
“No, I’ll explain. First, you’ve got the Chinese.”
“That was Haley’s paranoid fantasy.”
“They are the world’s starlings. Starlings imitate better than mockingbirds. They imitate car alarms, women’s screams, dogs barking. And they steal sparrows’ nests to lay their eggs. Right now, the Chinese government is focused on solar cells and batteries. They’re cornering the world’s supplies of raw materials for both.
But the minute they see that these algae are a real threat, they’ll steal the code and make their own.”
“So you bury it? That’s the solution?”
“For the moment. Meanwhile, there’re other considerations.”
“Such as.”
“Is global warming really all that awful? Man is adaptable. He is the most adaptable creature on the planet. Raise the average temperature five or ten degrees and man will find a way to produce cheaper air-conditioning. Hell, we survived how many ice ages? We keep coming back stronger. And if the sea level rises twenty feet and we lose some shorefront property, I will shed no tears. And those who can’t adapt will not survive. I understand that. But you read the news. Tell me it’s not time to thin the herd, son. We get all in a snit over racism in this country. Are we being PC enough? Too much? Look at northern Africa. They’re enslaving, torturing, raping, and killing each other over shades of skin tone that we’d ascribe to a good tan. Or how about the Arab Spring? They take to the streets, overthrow the dictator, have an election, and elect a different dictator. That’s the Russian model, I believe. I ask you, who do you want in charge at the end of the day? We’re not perfect, I admit. But the fact that this country’s Congress is incapable of passing one bit of legislation that has any effect on the world gives me great satisfaction. Do we really want to be another China, with the government telling us how many babies we can have? How many widgets we can produce? Where we can live and with whom? Freedom, Jason. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s what our forefathers fought and died for. The freedom to run our lives, our businesses, as we see fit.”
“With you in the driver’s seat.”
He was amused. “I pay people to do my driving for me. That’s why I want you, Jason. I can use you, and I will make you very wealthy. Your son will have unimaginable access to the best treatments in the world. You will have power over your fellow man and you will be using it for the betterment of the human race.”
“Better as defined by you alone.”
“And who better? I take good care of my own.”
“What exactly would I be doing?”
His smile was exultant. He believed he was winning me over. “This and that,” he answered.
I had no use for power, either for myself or my son. The best treatment in the world for him was my love and support. And Heather, and his school, and his doctors and therapists. Nevertheless, that was covered. He was already getting the best.
And for myself? Did I feel any flicker of desire? Great wealth? I had more than enough. Power? Of the kind that derives from executing the orders of the mighty? It was a form of exalted slavery.
“I’m going to disappoint you, Mr. Deeter. I sincerely thank you for the offer, but your racial paranoia is already out-of-date. It offends me aesthetically, but that’s not my point. It’s too late. The world is moving faster than any one man can control. Even you. I don’t know who’s going to win, but I know in the end you will lose.”
“You can be blunt, I see.”
“I’m not very good at being anything but. Not everyone takes it as well as you.”
“We could argue the issue. I’m opinionated, I admit. But I’m not stupid. I could make some very good points.”
“I’m sure. But you won’t change my mind.”
“What about your son?”
“My son is fine,” I said. Even if he did occasionally put his urine in a plastic cup. “But even if he wasn’t, I couldn’t take your offer. I don’t like your methods. I wouldn’t fit in with your other lackeys. I made some mistakes, for which I served some time. Prison no longer frightens me. But if I ever go back, it will be for my mistakes and mine alone. I’m no saint. But I can live with my mistakes. I can’t live with others’.”
“I misjudged you again. I apologize. This may be a first for me. Two apologies in a single day.”
“No need. I’m not offended by the offer, or even by your wealth and power. Only by your ideology and your means.”
He nodded once and looked out the window. There was nothing to see but the traffic and the concrete walls of the highway. He cleared his throat thickly before he spoke. “Well, you have my marker, Mr. Stafford. I owe you a great favor. If you ever need a great favor in return, I would like to take the opportunity to balance the books. But I will also tell you that if I ever find you in my way again, I will not waste a moment and will have you taken out immediately. You are too dangerous a man to be working for the other side, whatever or whoever that may be.”
It was my turn to be silent as we crossed over the Belt Parkway and entered the airport. Colored signs flickered by announcing airlines serving every corner of the globe, and for a moment I felt at one with all the thousands of travelers who came this way every day, harboring dreams of escape, conquest, romance, or success. By day’s end, I would be with my son. Skeli. My father.
“I will keep that in mind, Mr. Deeter. Both the threat and the favor. But if there is ever a time when I can bring you down, without hurting myself or my son, I will take it.”
Deeter smiled again, this time with real pleasure. “I will shake your hand on that.” He did. The car came to a halt. We were at the terminal.
I began to get out and stopped. “By the way, whatever happened to that cowboy? In Santa Fe? The one who got attacked by the dog.”
“Don’t know. He lived, I’m sure, ’else somebody would have told me about it. The dog was put down. That I know. A shame.”
I got out and stood on the curb as they pulled away. I took out my cell phone and quickly snapped a picture of the rear of the car and the license plate. You never know when some little shard of tile might be the key to revealing the whole mosaic.
52
I walked out of the airport into the late-afternoon sun with my jacket over my arm. My arm was already sweating.
“Can I help you, sir? Do you need a cab?” The speaker was a tall black man in creased black shorts and a crisp short-sleeved shirt with epaulets. He had a silver name tag over the pocket that read WINSTON.
“I think I do. I was told there was a ferry somewhere nearby that would get me over to the Aerie.”
“No ferry. If you are a guest, they will send a boat to pick you up. That is the only way to get there. Are you expected?”
“Yes. My family is staying there.”
“Ah. Very good then. The Aerie is very exclusive. Very private.”
And costing me rock star kind of money. “Where do they pick me up?”
“The easiest for you is the dock at Aragorn’s Studio.”
“Will the cabbie know where that is?”
He smiled a big warm Caribbean grin. “You can walk there in three minutes.” He pointed toward a footpath that led through a grove of tall palms. “It is just the other side of those trees.”
“And how do I call for the boat?”
“You are from the States? Your cell phone will work here.”
I offered Winston a ten, which he politely refused, and I started walking. Once I got away from the building, there was a breeze and the heat felt less oppressive. In fact, the warmth coming through the back of my shirt was making my muscles loosen almost immediately. I was entering vacation mode.
The woman who answered at the Aerie had the kind of accent that you hear on BBC News, as though she once attended the same school as the Royal Family. She assured me that a launch would be there in minutes.
The shade under the palms held back the direct heat of the sun, but inside the grove the breeze died. I was sweating heavily by the time I came through to the beach. My eyes took in the sparkling, pale green water, the snow-white sand, and the green hills surrounding the bay. I felt my New York winter defenses melting. I was no longer a fugitive. I was alive. My family was safe. And despite having been immersed in the frigid waters of Long Island Sound for hours, I was over my cold.
There w
ere four small, makeshift docks sticking out into the bay, each with one or two inflatable dinghies or a scarred, ancient wooden skiff. I walked down the beach until I saw a sign for Aragorn’s Studio, a shop that appeared to sell everything from local art to T-shirts to muffins. The dock out front reached out into slightly deeper water.
Before I reached the end of the dock, I heard the powerful motor of an open launch coming up the channel in the middle of the bay. The driver did a wide turn and expertly pulled up and gestured for me to board.
“Welcome to the Aerie, Mr. Stafford,” said the young black man, dressed in a well-pressed khaki uniform. “May I see your passport?”
I handed it over. He checked that my face matched the scowling picture inside. “Ha! You see? You come to the islands and your smile improves very much right away.” He handed it back.
A covered electric cart was waiting for us at the base of the pier across the bay. The lady with the BBC voice, or her auditory clone, was the driver.
“Mr. Stafford? We’ll get you checked in and then find your family. Shall we?” The cart ran up a narrow paved path through two tight switchbacks to the top of the hill. The whole of the Sir Francis Drake Channel was laid out below us with Saint John rising highest at the far end. There were dozens of big white-sailed boats moving about over the dark blue water. It looked like a playground for millionaires.
Checking in meant giving my passport to a very large, very serious man who looked like he spent all of his spare time lifting very heavy objects and putting them back down again. He took it, scanned it, and sat reading something on his computer monitor. Evidently satisfied that I was not on any terrorist watch list, he returned the document to me and said, “Welcome to Aerie, Mr. Stafford. Enjoy your stay.”
The BBC lady drove me along a series of paved paths down the back side of the hill, giving me a mini guided tour of the property. Three restaurants, a boathouse, tennis courts, and in the center the spa, the largest building in the community. We dropped down closer to the ocean beach and pulled up in front of a cluster of three huts with a small private soaking pool. We were steps above the beach and I could hear the sound of the gentle surf.
Long Way Down Page 29
