Last to Die (10 page)

Jack shot him a wicked glare.

Theo coughed, as if suddenly recalling that the last high-profile case had nearly gotten Jack, himself, indicted. Okay, forget the publicity angle. Let's talk dollars and sense. You got pretty beat up in the divorce. The only thing Cindy didn't take was your car and your best friend, and she probably could've had that too. Imagine me wearing a fucking cap and driving Miss Daisy all around Coral Gables in a Mustang convertible.

It wasn't worth the fight. I just wanted to move on.

That doesn't change the facts. You got a nice house here, Jack, but you don't own it, and we're sitting outside watching TV not because it's such a beautiful night, but because you don't even have an air conditioner.

What's your point?

One third of forty-six million dollars - that's my point.

You think I should sign on as Tatum's lawyer?

If you don't, someone else will. Why shouldn't it be you? All the other beneficiaries are hiring topflight lawyers.

The other lawyers have the comfort of knowing that their client didn't kill Sally Fenning.

So do you.

Jack drank his beer, didn't say anything.

Theo said, I can't give you a hundred percent proof Tatum didn't kill her. But he gave me his word, brother to brother, in the boxing ring, and there's probably no place more sacred to the Knight brothers than the ring. There's no sure thing in life, especially when you're talking about a shot at a one-third contingency fee on a take of forty-six million bucks.

I know what you're saying.

I don't think you do. I'm talking about more than just money. It's who you are, and who you're going to be the rest of your pathetic life.

Let's not get carried away here.

This is no bullshit. Tatum and I used to have this saying. There's two kinds of people in this world, risk takers and shit takers.

Jack laughed, but Theo was serious.

Theo said, Tatum might not be your ideal version of a client, but he's giving you the chance to answer a very important question. So think real hard before you spit out an answer: What do you want to be the rest of your life, Jack Swyteck? A risk taker? Or a shit taker?

They locked eyes, and then Jack looked away, letting his gaze drift toward the water and a distant sailboat running wing-and-wing toward the mainland. Tell your brother to stop by the office tomorrow. We'll sign a contingency fee agreement.

Part Two Chapter Eleven The Harmattan winds were blowing right on schedule.

It was Rene's third autumn in West Africa, and no one had to tell her that the dusty winds had returned in full force. Her dry eyes and stinging nostrils didn't lie. The winds blew from the deserts of the north, starting as early as October, typically lasting through February. With the dust, however, came occasionally cooler temperatures at night, though cooler was indeed a relative concept in a place where a typical daytime high was ninety-five degrees and the weather on the whole was best described as gaspingly hot. In the next five months they'd have just five days with rainfall, but at least there would be no raging rivers of mud to wash livestock, children, or entire hillside villages into the valley. Life in West Africa was a trade-off, and Rene had learned to accept that. For the foreseeable future, she'd live with dust in her hair, dust on her clothes, dust on her toothbrush, and it was just too damn bad if her friends back home just couldn't understand why the snapshots she sent them had such a flat lifelessness about them. Even under the best of circumstances, it was hard to do photographic justice to the endless grasslands of northern CA'te d'Ivoire, unless you were a professional, and Rene was anything but that.

Rene was a pediatrician who had volunteered for a three-year stint with Children First, a human rights organization that was fighting against the forced servitude of children in the cocoa fields. The inspiration had struck her in her last year of residency at Boston Children's Hospital. One night in the lounge, while wolfing down her typical dinner of a diet soda and a candy bar, she read an article about the reemergence of slavery. Studies by the United Nations and the State Department confirmed that approximately fifteen thousand children, aged nine to twelve, had been sold into forced labor on cotton, coffee, and cocoa plantations in CA'te d'Ivoire. The situation was only predicted to get worse, as prices for cocoa continued to fall, and almost half of the world's cocoa came from the very region that had stooped to child labor to boost profitability. Her candy bar suddenly didn't taste quite as sweet. It just so happened that she was at one of those Why did I go to med school? junctures. Was it time to move to Brookline and wipe snot from the noses of kids who came to checkups in the company of their nannies, or did she yearn for something more? Before she had time to reconsider, she was on a plane to Abidjan, her ultimate destination being Korhogo, capital of the Senoufo country, a nine-hour bus ride north.

CA'te d'Ivoire had been rocked by a military coup in 1999, and Rene arrived just in time to find it besieged by a host of medical problems - malnutrition, AIDS, infant mortality, even genital mutilation among some migrant tribes. She did it all, but she tried to focus on the mission that had moved her. Officially, the local governments denied that child slavery existed. Soon enough, however, Rene was able to put a face on the crisis, the faces of children who were routed to her clinic for assistance as they struggled to find their way home to the most impoverished of countries that neighbored CA'te d'Ivoire. Children who told her of men luring them away from their families in bus stops and busy shopping markets in countries like Mali, Benin, or Burkina Faso. Many traveled by sea, packed in crowded old ships at ports like Cotonou, ironically a thriving center of slave trade in earlier centuries. Others came by land, trucking through the brush and canoeing across rivers until they reached plantations far from civilization, farther still from home. They stopped only when it was time for the men to get out and negotiate with cocoa farmers near Lake Kossou, when two or three or twelve children at a time would march off to meet other children of the same fate. They lived in overcrowded huts without cots, without plumbing or electricity, but with strict rules against talking, because talking led to complaining, and complaining led to revolt. They told Rene of twelve-hour workdays in the fields, sunup to sundown, and the hunger in their bellies from lousy food, mostly burned bananas, maybe a yam if they were lucky. They showed Rene the scars on their legs, arms, and backs, told her of the beatings when they didn't work fast enough. The beatings when they didn't work long enough. The beatings when they tried to escape. Beatings, beatings, and more beatings. All for no pay to the child, just a promise of perhaps a lump sum payment of ten or fifteen dollars to the child's family, a payment that was frequently never made. No one wanted to call it slavery, but one of the first rules Rene had learned in med school was that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck Chickens clucked behind her, startling her.

Ysugri, nassara, said the man as he passed her on the street. Excuse me, white woman.

Rene stepped aside. The man had a long wooden pole across his shoulders, balanced on either end by live chickens unhappily hanging by their claws. The official language of CA'te d'Ivoire was French, but few Africans spoke it, particularly in the north. Based on his tongue and dress, she guessed the man was from Burkina Faso, a desolate, landlocked country to the north that made CA'te d'Ivoire glisten like a model of prosperity.

Rene flowed with the stream of cows, mules, and pedestrians to the city market. Some of the streets were paved, but others were just dirt trails that wound through the city like footpaths to centuries past. She knew her way, but it was easy enough for anyone to find it this time of year, as any gathering of this size stirred up a reddish-pink cloud of dust that was visible from across town. There wasn't much to do in Kohorgo, and the afternoon market was a reliable source of entertainment, if you could stand the heat.

Rene stopped at the corner to sip water from her canteen. Two years earlier, she would never have gone out this time of day, but time had made her more durable. Or crazier.

Wanwana, wanwana? she heard the tourists ask. Travelers did indeed find Kohorgo, mostly on their way to someplace else, almost always in search of its crude and unusual painted toiles, a native form of art that found its way into just about every hotel and expat home in the country in the form of wall hangings, bedspreads, napkins, and tablecloths. The question at the afternoon market was always the same: How much?

Good price, she whispered as she passed a couple of hard-bargaining Australians.

Thanks, mate, said one of them, and then he went on haggling.

Bargaining was a way of life at the market, though Rene had stitched up more than one tourist who'd failed to realize that once you negotiated one of these artists down to a certain level, it was extremely insulting if you ultimately did not buy.

A blast of wind sent the dust swirling, and Rene covered her face with her scarf. This was a particularly noxious blast, carrying with it the stench of sewer. Perhaps some rain had fallen to the north last night, or the authorities had simply decided it was time to unload the overflow.

The wind eased back a notch, and Rene opened her eyes. Dust continued to swirl, and the market was suddenly a haze, as if she were dreaming. The labyrinth of brown walls and buildings made of mud-brick almost seemed to melt into the earth. Shawls and wraps flapped in the dirty breeze. Animals stirred at the more subtle desert odors blown in from the north. And the tourists kept haggling.

In a few moments she was able to focus once again, and her eyes fixed on a young boy standing on the corner, a boy like many others she'd seen. Skinny legs, muddy trousers, plastic sandals. The tattered shirt, eyes filled with fear. Anyone else would have thought he was lost. But Rene knew the look.

This boy was running.

Slowly, she started moving in his direction, careful not to scare him off. She kept watch without making eye contact, wending her way through the crowd, taking a circuitous route to the street corner that the boy seemed to have claimed - he and scores of other children who passed their days begging in the streets.

The onslaught began as she drew closer, child after child with outstretched hand.

S'il vous plaA(r)t, mademoiselle. S'il vous plaA(r)t. If you were white, even the street children knew enough French to say please in the official language.

It was hard to ignore them, but she couldn't help all of them. Only the slaves among them.

Though surrounded by other children, she never lost sight of the boy. Just ten feet away, her suspicions were confirmed. She could see the blisters on his hands and the crisscrossing of scars around the calves and ankles. Boys in the field cut the cocoa pods with machetes. It took one or two good lengthwise whacks to break open the woody shell and scoop out the beans. A good boy could split open five hundred pods an hour, though with fatigue or lack of experience they often slashed themselves. At least this one still had all his fingers and toes.

Finally, after continuous effort, she managed to plant herself beside him.

S'il vous plaA(r)t, mademoiselle, he said with outstretched hand.

His French was remarkably good, so she replied in the same language. Don't be afraid, she said. I've come to help you.

He took a half-step back. Clearly he understood.

I've helped lots of boys like you, she said. Boys who work in the cocoa fields.

Other beggars tried to force their way between them, but Rene kept working him. I'm a doctor.

She pulled a photograph of her clinic from her pocket. She'd found it useful in past cases to be able to show the boys something. It's just around the corner. Come with me. I can help you get home.

He shook his head, as if he'd heard that one before.

She stepped toward him, then stopped, fearing that she was coming on too strong. Please, she said. You don't look like the other children, you understand? Come with me. Let me help you before the child brokers find you again.

He looked into her eyes, and she didn't dare look away. Being a woman was such a huge advantage when talking to a boy who'd been lied to by so many men.

He nodded slowly, and she immediately took his hand. It was the coarse and calloused hand of an old man, surely not of the boy he was. She led him back across the market, down a dusty shortcut she knew to her clinic.

What's your name?

Kamun.

How old are you?

I don't know, he said.

Do you want some water?

Yes.

They stopped, and she let him drink from her canteen.

Thank you.

She smiled and patted his head. You're welcome.

At the end of the dusty trail was the Children First clinic, which didn't look like much of a clinic. It was one of the older buildings in the neighborhood, thick walls of mud-brick and an adobe-style roof. But it did have a noisy air-conditioning unit sticking out the window, which seemed to delight the boy.

Cool, he said, smiling.

Yes. It is. Come inside.

He followed her in, and she closed the door behind him. He seemed nervous again, so she took him by the hand and let him stand directly in front of the A/C and turned it on full-blast. He smiled, even laughed a little as the cold air dried the sweat on his brow.