Jay Giles

by Blindsided (A Thriller)

  Janet fluffed her hair one more time, said something to the three men, and sashayed—alone—to a seat on Fish’s side of the aisle.

  Tory leaned over. “See,” she whispered in my ear.

  She saw Janet’s choice of seats as an indication she was getting closer, getting ready to approach Fish. To me, Janet was still six rows away from him. They weren’t playing kneesies yet.

  The program started. One by one, members of the audience got up to talk. I was beginning to recognize some of the regulars—Sid, Ethel, and Don.

  To my surprise, Fish got up. He gripped the sides of the podium with his hands. His eyes showed terror. “I’m Frank Ford, and I’m an alcoholic,” he said in a deep, quivering voice. “I’m new to Sarasota. Been sober since I got here—twelve days now. Really don’t know anybody yet. Oh, I met a few people, sure—doctors mostly. Them I gotta know. But I don’t know any, you know, real people. It’s pretty lonely. I guess, cause I’m lonely, I want to drink, which I know I shouldn’t do.” He paused, surveyed the room, his heavy brows knitted. “I learned something from this, something important. Friends are like a bypass operation, you need ‘em to keep you going.” As abruptly as he’d gotten up, he sat down.

  “See,” Tory leaned over and whispered. “Surprised you, didn’t he?”

  Stunned was more like it. His pathetic plea had been perfect. Unfortunately, two long-winded talkers followed Fish to the podium. The first man was bad, the second awful. So bad, in fact, the bearded man stepped in and announced they were out of time.

  Nobody complained. Some people stood and began moving around, Janet among them. She scooted down the aisle, turned the corner, and intercepted Fish. They stood there talking. Or rather, she talked. Fish might have said a word or two. She smiled. Fish nodded. Something was decided. She took his arm, and they headed out together.

  I tried not to stare as they walked by.

  “Oh, my God,” Tory said as soon as they were out the door. “It worked.”

  “C’mon,” I said, standing up and following them. “We need to see what happens.”

  She hurried to keep up with me. “You want to spy on them?”

  “I prefer to think of it as chaperoning.”

  Out on the street, we saw Fish holding the passenger door of the Mercedes open for her. She got in. Fish closed the door and headed for the driver’s side. We walked hurriedly up the sidewalk to where I’d parked the Saab.

  With the head start he had on us, I was afraid we’d lost him. Five blocks down the street, however, we spotted the Mercedes parked at the curb in front of a Starbuck’s. That made sense. I remembered Tory’s comment about how they’d gotten to know each other over coffee.

  “Aren’t we going in?” Tory wanted to know when I continued past.

  “Starbuck’s is a little too cozy for the four of us. I think we’d do better to watch from out here.” I put my left turn signal on, waited for a car to pass, turned left into a driveway. I backed out, drove to a spot on the opposite side of the street from Starbuck’s. From where we were parked, we saw Fish and Janet carry their coffee to a table by the window.

  After only a few minutes, Tory groaned. “This is like watching paint dry.”

  I looked over at her, surprised. “Wait a minute. I’m the one who should be bored. You’re the P.I. You should be extolling the virtues of stakeouts.”

  She gave me a pained look. “You are so full of crap.”

  “Moi? Your employer?”

  The pained look continued. “Stakeouts went out with the Rockford Files. Nobody has time to sit around and hope they see something.”

  “And your alternative would be?”

  “How about changing our appearances? You’ve done it once. I’m sure I can come up with something.”

  “I had a friend in the theater who helped me. I’ll call her and see what she can do for you.”

  Tory nodded. “That’s better than sitting in the car all the time. I feel like a stalker.”

  Fortunately, their coffee didn’t take long. Forty-five minutes later, Fish escorted her to the car, they got in, and he drove her back to where her car was parked. After that, we thought he’d head back to the condo. He did, with one stop on the way, a liquor store, where he bought beer. Lots of beer. A celebration?

  Chapter 29

  We sat around the condo’s kitchen table drinking beer. “She said she knew what it was like to be alone and didn’t want me to have to go through that kind of pain.” Fish was giving us the play by play, word for word. “I said, yeah, I feel like I don’t have a friend in the world. She smiled when I said that, said she’d be my friend.”

  Gag me with a spoon.

  “It was your speech,” Tory said. “It showed your vulnerable side.”

  Fish nodded, swallowed some beer. He put the can back down on the table, leaned forward, and looked at her, his bushy eyebrows arched high. “You think?”

  “I’m sure you impressed her,” Tory assured him.

  “Let’s let Mr. Sensitive tell it—without coaching,” I suggested.

  Tory frowned at me, sat back in her chair.

  Fish took the hint. “Yeah, well. She said she always went for coffee after these meetings and asked if I wanted to come with her. I said what I could really use was a beer.” He paused, expecting a reaction. When he didn’t get one, he said, “She thought it was funny.”

  “Hilarious. Continue.”

  He shrugged. “I drove to the coffee place—a Starbucks. Gave me a chance to show off the car. She thought it was nifty.”

  “Did she ask if you had other cars?” Tory asked.

  “Yeah, she did. Like we rehearsed, I told her my big Mercedes was in Detroit. This one was just to tool around in down here.” He shook his head. “Actually, she pumped me pretty good. She asked how I came to Sarasota. I told her by plane.” Again, he gave us the look, waiting for a reaction.

  I sighed, exasperated by his attempts at humor. “You didn’t tell her you came here because your doctor recommended it?”

  His brow furrowed, causing his eyebrows to collide. “A wealthy guy like Frank Ford wouldn’t just do an information dump. A guy with that much money, well, he’d be a little more sophisticated. I thought that’s how you wanted me to act?”

  I smiled. The humor was Fish’s attempt at sophistication. At least he was trying. Fish was only doing what he thought we wanted. It was important not to dump on him. Better to encourage him. “That’s exactly how I want you to act,” I said. “She gave you the perfect opening to talk doctors. I just wanted to make sure you took advantage of it—within character, of course.”

  His brow unfurrowed. His jowls quivered. His version of a smile. “Exactly. I was asking myself what’s my motivation here? And I was thinking Frank Ford has a confidence about him, a sense of humor. He’s not the kind of guy who would just blurt out his medical problems. I mean, he’s a tough business guy, right? He’d be a hard case. She’d have to pull information about his doctors out of him. So that’s what I made her do.”

  “You did?” I asked incredulously.

  “Absolutely. She had to work to get Dr. Clark and Dr. Jarrett’s names.”

  “But she got them?”

  “Eventually.”

  “What else did she have to pry out of you?”

  “She asked about family—if I’d been married, had children. I told her I was still a virgin and gave her one of these.” He scrunched up his eye in what might pass for a wink.

  “What did she say about not having any family?” Tory asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” I repeated.

  “Nothing,” he said, finishing his beer, and leering at each of us ecstatically. “What she said was she didn’t believe a guy like me could still be a virgin, but if I was, she’d have to do something about that.”

  Chapter 30

  I had trouble getting to sleep that night. Once I did, the dreams came.

  We’d just arrived at church for the funeral
. Dad had driven. Mom had tried to make small talk. I’d sat in the back, dazed, withdrawn, Eddie by my side. Dad parked the car. I didn’t want to get out. He helped me, put his arm around my shoulder. “We’ll get through this, Matt.”

  Every step I took from the car to the church was slow, labored. The priest met us outside, said a prayer, escorted us in. Friends and family were there, a sea of sad faces. In front of the altar, three caskets in a row.

  I saw it all but none of it registered. What got my attention was the music, the church organ groaning a somber dirge. Claire would have hated it.

  “Matt, where are you going?” I heard my mother say as I walked off down the aisle to talk to the organist.

  I startled the poor lady. She stopped playing, ending with a couple of abrupt, strident notes.

  “Do you know In This Very Room?” I asked her, tears streaming down my face. The song had been one of Claire’s favorites.

  She nodded, began playing.

  A lone voice starting singing. Others joined in. I tried. The words wouldn’t come. Just tears.

  I woke. The hurt as deep as ever. I looked over at the bedside clock. Five a.m. I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep. I got up, took a shower, had some breakfast, went in to the office.

  At seven-thirty, I called Dr. Swarthmore, got her machine, left a message. She hadn’t called back by ten, when Rosemary buzzed me. “Julian on line one.”

  I picked up. “Hello, Julian.”

  “Hang on one second.” I heard him give instructions in quick, authoritative bursts to someone in his office, probably Amanda. “Sorry,” he said coming back on the line. “Our mediation session has been scheduled for tomorrow at one o’clock here at my offices. You don’t have a problem with that time, do you?”

  All the things I’d rather be doing flashed through my mind. “No; let’s get this over with.”

  “I agree. This is going to be a total waste of time. But at least it will get their demands on the table.”

  Unfortunately, the mediator was powerless to resolve anything. The mediation session was simply a required step to make sure there were issues to be resolved when the case went to arbitration. Nevitt, of course, would insist the issues were huge, setting the stage to ask for major damages. Julian would downplay things, field a trial balloon on how much Nevitt wanted to end this thing. Nevitt would get a figure out on the table. We’d laugh at it and the case would move on to arbitration.

  “Nevitt give any clues when you talked to him?”

  “Not really. He knows I’ve filed a motion to dismiss his civil suit. He ran his mouth about that. Judging by the way he ranted, tomorrow could be ugly. You prepared for that?”

  “Guess I’ll have to be. Who’s the mediator?”

  “Sue Ann Tansky. Know her?”

  “No.”

  “Seemed nice enough on the phone, but I’m not expecting anything from her. We just need to get through this.”

  “See you at one.” I rang off, entered the event and time in my Blackberry.

  Rosemary buzzed again. “Dr. Swarthmore on two.”

  “Adelle, thanks for calling back so quickly.”

  “Not a problem. More dreams?”

  “Afraid so,” I said and filled her in. As I did, I heard the scratching sounds of a pen on paper, pages being turned.

  When I finished, she said, “I have a group session in just a few minutes, so I can’t talk long. This dream, like all the others, Matt, was your mind processing information. The fact that you’ve now processed this information—that you have more of the grieving process behind you—is positive. These last dreams have happened in close proximity to each other. Almost in a cluster. Indicating, perhaps, a final burst to completion.” I heard paper rustling, pages turning. “That’s consistent with the progress you’ve made. You are far more interactive with people than you were six months ago. This dream cluster may be an indication you’re getting ready to allow friendships to deepen into relationships.” I heard the sounds of a door opening, people talking. “I’m afraid I have to go, Matt. Would you like to schedule a time when we can talk longer?”

  I hesitated. “Let’s see how things go the next couple of days. Then I’ll call and schedule something.”

  “That’s good. Take care, Matt,” she said as she rang off.

  I worked steadily the rest of the day. Left the office at seven, grabbed a bite of dinner on my way home, went for a long walk on the beach. I needed to think through what I’d learned from Raines.

  His theory that D’Onifrio planned to use me to demonstrate his ruthlessness made sense. That’s why he’d gone along with my crazy marriage idea. Not because he thought it would work or because he didn’t want to attract attention. It was because he could turn it to his own benefit.

  The question was could I turn it back? That’s what I needed to explore. Ever since the meeting with Raines, something had been nagging at my subconscious. As I walked along the edge of the water, letting the waves wash up on my feet, I tried to get that something to reveal itself. I walked about a mile and a half, turned, and walked back.

  That night, at two in the morning, I woke up knowing what that something was.

  Better yet, I knew how to use it to my advantage.

  Chapter 31

  The next morning at the office, I told Rosemary I was going to run a quick errand, left the building, and found a pay phone. I dialed the number Paul Raines had given me.

  “Yeah,” a voice answered.

  “This is Matt, I need to talk to Paul,” I said trying not to reveal much.

  “Give me your number. He’ll call you right back.”

  I read him the pay phone number, hung up, waited. No more than a minute later, it rang. I picked it up.

  “You needed to talk?” It was Raines.

  “I’ve got a couple of questions that need answers.”

  “Not over the phone.”

  “No. I was hoping you’d meet with me again.”

  “You’re out on Longboat, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know where the dry dock boat storage is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go there tomorrow. Ask in the office for Mike. He’ll get you to me.”

  “What time?”

  “Be there at ten.”

  “I will. Thanks.” I hung up, walked back to the office. I had two hours before our meeting with the mediator. I used the time to put through a batch of transactions, caught a quick lunch at The Bagel Stop, arrived at Julian’s office ten minutes early.

  I thought I’d be the first one there. Amanda, Julian’s associate, assured me I wasn’t. “They’re all in the conference room,” she told me as she led me back.

  “Probably yukking it up in there, right?”

  She looked back at me over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. “This is not the fun bunch, no.” We reached the conference room doors. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I opened the door. Inside, all three—Julian, Nevitt, and Sue Ann Tansky—turned and watched me. I tried to read their faces. Julian was smiling. Nevitt was scowling. The mediator, an older brunette wearing heavy glasses and a high-necked suit, showed a grim expression I took to be her I’m-objective-this-is-serious face.

  I didn’t let that deter me. I walked over, extended my hand. “Ms. Tansky, I’m Matt Seattle.”

  She offered a limp handshake and mumbled something that sounded like, “Havaseat.”

  I took the seat next to Julian and facing Nevitt. Tansky was to my left at the head of the long table, an open legal-sized folder of documents in front of her.

  Julian looked at his watch. “Now that we’re all here, I think we can begin.” He looked at Tansky, who had her head down, studying documents.

  She continued to read, apparently oblivious to our waiting. Finally, she looked up. “Let’s try and make productive use of our time here.” It was a schoolteacher’s chiding voice. “The first thing I need to know is whether there’s still a dispute to be med
iated.”

  Nevitt snorted. “We think there is.”

  “We don’t,” Julian added firmly.

  Tansky looked up from her papers, smiled slightly. “Those answers add up to a yes. We’ll move forward.” She looked at Nevitt. “Mr. Nevitt, it looks like your client, Mrs. Jesso, never actually dealt with Mr. Seattle. Is that right?”

  Nevitt nodded. “That’s correct. Mr. Jesso handled all the couple’s financial affairs. He told his wife he felt Mr. Seattle was taking advantage of—”

  “That’s enough Mr. Nevitt. I was just trying to understand why Mr. Jesso didn’t bring these charges.”

  “He was about to,” Nevitt volunteered, “when he died.”

  “That’s hearsay, of course,” Julian added smoothly. “Not the fact he died. That’s indisputable. However, there’s no evidence of any dissatisfaction on Mr. Jesso’s part.”

  Tansky took a deep breath, blew out. “This will go more quickly without these little posturing exchanges,” she chided, giving both Julian and Nevitt hard looks. “I need to get your positions on the table. Let’s see if we can do that without starting a debate. Mr. Nevitt, state your position.”

  “We’re looking for the return of all commissions, the total dollar figure is $95,000, I believe.”

  “Mr. Ockerman,” she said to Julian, “what’s your position?”

  “We want a complete dismissal.”

  “Back to you, Mr. Nevitt. Is there anything else you require before this case goes to arbitration?”

  Nevitt thought for a moment, frowned, shook his head. “I don’t think so. No.”

  “Mr. Ockerman, is there anything you require.”

  “As a matter of fact, there is. You may have noticed that there are trades in question that originated at Merrill Lynch.”

  Tansky nodded. “Yes, I was aware of those.”

  “It’s been alleged Mr. Seattle made those trades. He says he didn’t, which calls into question who did. Since Mr. Nevitt’s client is the one who stands to benefit, we’d like to review her financial records for the last year.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Nevitt shouted. “She’s the victim here. You’re trying to harass her.”