Long Way Down (27 page)

“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 I sincerely thank you for the offer, but your racial paranoia is already out-of-date.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.

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 were 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.

It was hard to believe that I was still on the same planet that I had woken up in the day before.

“Well, it appears they’ve all gone out for a bit,” she said, after showing me in. “You may find them on the beach. Just through there and down the steps.”

“Thank you,” I said, fumbling in my pocket for a bill to give her.

“A kind thought,” she said, shaking her hand to indicate a gentle negative. “The Aerie is a non-tipping resort. Your wife made dinner reservations for seven o’clock, but you may want to come up a bit earlier for cocktails and sunset.” She hopped back in the cart and was gone.

My wife
. It sounded good, possibly for the first time in my life.

I left my bag and jacket on one of the lounge chairs by the pool, noticing as I did the five toy cars lined up beneath it. Even with no one there, I knew I was in the right place. I stripped off my shoes and socks, rolled up my shirtsleeves and pant legs, and walked down to the beach. I kept the Outlaws hat on. There would be plenty of time later to explain why I had acquired a gunshot wound on my head.

The distance in height from the deck in front of the huts to the shoreline could not have been more than four or five feet. If Deeter and people like him won, all this would be gone in a generation or two, the ocean devouring most of the island. A blink of time in the history of man, but a very long time in my life. Perhaps I would never see it. But it is impossible to be a parent and not look at the world as you will leave it and wish that the beauty could be preserved.

There was another small island a quarter mile offshore and a flock of birds circled above it, wheeling and diving. The shadows of the hills to the west on Tortola were already beginning to throw sections of the beach in shadow. I put my feet in the water. The memory of a dream I used to have shuddered through me. I let it go and just let myself feel the pull and lift of the small waves.

“Jason!” It was Skeli, her voice full of exhilaration. Far down the beach a group of people began to form into shapes I recognized. A tall woman walking with a small child, whose hair shone like a beacon against the gathering dark. Skeli and the Kid. Behind them my father and Estrella. Skeli was waving madly. “Jason!”

I waved one arm, then two, my throat so tight with emotion I couldn’t speak. Finally, “Helloooooo!”

Skeli and the Kid began running toward me. The Kid broke away and flew across the beach. I tried running to meet him and almost tripped head over heels as my feet sank into the soft sand at the water’s edge. “Helllooooo!” I screamed.

The Kid slammed into me, wrapped his arms around my legs, and sank to the ground, laughing, gasping, and crying. I almost made the mistake of reaching down and hugging him back. Instead, I put the back of my hand in front of his face and he sniffed and laughed with real pleasure, then in a flash he became angry, his face contorting as he yelled at me, “Jason bad! Jason bad!”

“I’m sorry, bud. I was scared, too. Please don’t be mad at me, my heart will just break.”

He looked confused, but grabbed me tighter and turned his face away.

Skeli came up, laughing with pleasure. Neither of us said anything at first. We just wrapped arms around each other and stood there trying not to cry. I tried. Skeli didn’t bother. “Oh, thank god,” she said over and over.

Pop and Estrella came along slower, stopping a few feet away, hesitating to invade our tableau. I looked up and waved them over.

I stood on an idyllic beach, with a sunset just beginning that would rival any, anywhere, anytime, holding my family to me and wanting nothing
more.

My life is blessed in so many ways these days. The first blessing is and always will be my lovely wife, my Ruby—my greatest fan and severest critic. Then there are my agents, Judith Weber and Nat Sobel, and their fantastic team. Next, the people at Putnam who always give the impression that they are working solely on my behalf: Neil Nyren, Sara Minnich, Kate Stark, Ashley Hewlett, Chris Nelson, Michael Barson, Rob Sternitzky, and the copy editors who have saved me from embarrassment time and again. The community of writers, too many to name, who have extended their friendship or given me their support individually or through organizations like Private Eye Writers, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, and the International Crime Writers. The Muses and my readers who keep me honest and true to myself and my characters. The booksellers—the front line in the fight against the forces of darkness. And especial thanks to the various experts who have lit my way through the deep caverns of the judicial system: Larry Ruggiero, Melissa Mourges, Richard Fiske, and Tim O’Rourke. Whatever I got right is thanks to them, and whatever I still got wrong is entirely my fault.

And if by some chance, you recognize yourself in one of my characters, let me assure you that you are mistaken. You are much better-looking, much smarter, and you can even sing better. None of my characters are meant to mimic any person alive or dead, real or imagined by anyone other than
me.

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