The Guardians: The explosive new thriller from international bestseller John Grisham (18 page)

A Florida real estate developer who moves conservatively?

I nod as if I find this fascinating. Money talk gives me a migraine. Anything to do with finance, markets, hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, basis points, real estate, bonds, etc., and I glaze over. Since I don’t have two nickels to rub together, I really don’t care how others plot their fortunes.

We amble through the lobby like a couple of tourists from Akron and take the elevator to the third floor where Tyler has a large suite. I follow him to a terrace with a lovely view of the beach and ocean beyond. He fetches two beers from a fridge and we sit down for a talk.

He begins with “I admire you, Post, for what you’re doing. I really do. I walked away from Quincy because I had no choice, but I’ve never believed he killed Keith Russo. I still think of him often.”

“Who did?”

He exhales and takes a long drink from his bottle. He gazes at the ocean. We are under a large umbrella on a terrace, with no sign of human activity anywhere in the vicinity except for some distant laughter on the beach. He looks at me and asks, “Are you wearing a wire, Post?”

Not today. Thankfully.

“Come on, Tyler. I’m not a cop.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“No. I’m not wearing a wire. You need a strip search?”

He nods and says, “Yes.”

I nod back, no problem. I step away from the table and strip down to my boxers. He watches closely, and when I’ve gone far enough he says, “That’s good.”

I get dressed and return to my seat and my beer.

He says, “Sorry about that, Post, but I can’t be too careful. You’ll understand later.”

I raise both hands and say, “Look, Tyler, I have no idea what you have on your mind, so I’ll just shut up and you do the talking, okay? I know you realize that everything is deathly confidential. The people who killed Keith Russo are still around, somewhere, and they’re afraid of the truth. You can trust me, okay?”

He nods and says, “I think so. You asked me who killed Russo, and the answer is I don’t know. I have a good theory, in fact an excellent one, and when I tell my story I think you’ll agree.”

I take a swig and say, “I’m all ears.”

He takes a deep breath and tries to relax. Alcohol is important here and I drain my bottle. He gets two more beers from the fridge, then leans back in his chair and gazes across the ocean. “I knew Keith Russo, and pretty well. He was about ten years older and going places, already tired of the small town and dreaming of something bigger. I wasn’t particularly fond of him, no one was really. He and his wife were making some money repping drug dealers in Tampa, even had an apartment down there. Lots of rumors around Seabrook that they were planning to pull up stakes, leave the backwater, and step into the big leagues. He and Diana kept to themselves, like they were a cut above the rest of us small-time ham-and-eggers. Occasionally, they were forced to get their hands dirty when things were slow—divorces, bankruptcies, wills and deeds—but that work was beneath them. The job Keith did for Quincy in his divorce was pathetic and Quincy was rightly ticked-off. They picked the perfect stooge, didn’t they, Post? Disgruntled client goes berserk and kills lazy lawyer.”

“Their plan worked.”

“Yes it did. The town was shocked. Quincy got arrested and everybody breathed easier. All the lawyers hid, everyone but me, and I got the call. Had no choice. At first I figured he was guilty, but he soon convinced me otherwise. I took the case and it ruined my law practice.”

“You did a marvelous job at trial.”

He waves me off. “I don’t care anymore. That was another life.” He leans in close on his elbows, as if things are now even more serious. “This is what happened to me, Post. I’ve never told anyone this story, not even my wife, and you can’t repeat it. Not that you’ll want to because it’s too dangerous. But here’s what happened. After the trial I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I was also disgusted with the trial and the verdict and I hated the system. But after a few weeks some of the fire returned because I had to do the appeal. I worked on it day and night and convinced myself that I could sway the Florida Supreme Court, something that rarely happens.”

He takes a drink and studies the ocean. “And the bad guys were watching me. I just knew it. I became paranoid about my phones, apartment, office, car, everything. There were two anonymous phone calls and both times a really eerie male voice said, ‘Back off.’ That’s it. Just, ‘Back off.’ I couldn’t report this to the police because I didn’t trust them. Pfitzner was in control of everything and he was the enemy. Hell, he was probably the voice on the other end.

“About five or six months after the trial, while I was working on the appeal, two of my law school buddies knew I needed to get away, so they planned a bonefishing trip to Belize. Ever tried bonefishing?”

I’ve never heard of bonefishing. “No.”

“It’s a blast. You stalk ’em in the saltwater flats, great here in the Bahamas and throughout Central America. Belize has some of the best. My buddies invited me down and I needed a break. Bonefishing is a real boys’ adventure—no wives, no girlfriends, plenty of drinking. So I went. The second night there, we went to a beach party not far from our fishing lodge. Lots of locals, some women, plenty of gringos there to fish and drink. Things got pretty rowdy. We were chugging beers and rum punch but not to the point of blacking out. We weren’t college-hammered, but my drink got spiked and someone took me away. To where I don’t know, will never know. I woke up on the floor of a concrete cell with no windows. Hot as hell, a sauna. My head was splitting and I needed to throw up. There was a small bottle of water on the floor and I gulped it down. I had been stripped down to my boxers. I sat there on the hot floor for hours and waited. Then the door opened and two really nasty boys with handguns came after me. They slapped me around, blindfolded me, and tied my wrists together, then marched me for probably half an hour down a dirt path. I was stumbling and dying of thirst, and every ten steps or so one of the thugs cussed me in Spanish and pushed me forward. When we stopped they tied a rope to my wrist, stretched my arms above my head, and yanked me up. It hurt like hell and led to shoulder surgery a year later, but I wasn’t thinking about later. I bounced off wooden beams as I went up and finally stopped at the top of a tower where they pulled off my blindfold and allowed me to soak in the scenery. We were at the edge of a pond or a swampy bayou or something, about the size of a football field. The water was thick and brown and filled with crocodiles. Lots of crocodiles. With me on the deck were three more heavily armed dudes who weren’t very friendly, and two skinny kids who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. They were dark-skinned and completely naked. A zip line of sorts ran from the tower, dipped across the pond, and was tied off at a tree on the other side. If not for the crocs, it might have been a fun summertime swimming hole with a zip line. If not for the crocs. My head was pounding and my heart was about to explode. They picked up a burlap sack filled with bloody chickens and hitched it to the zip line, then released it. As it swung down to the water it dripped blood, and this really excited the crocodiles. When the sack stopped over the center of the pond, one of the guards pulled a cord and the dead chickens dropped in a heap on top of the crocs. They must have been starving because they went crazy.

“With the appetizer served, it was time for the entrée. They grabbed the first skinny Latino boy and hitched his wrists to the zip line. He screamed as they kicked him off the tower and screamed even louder as he flew across the pond. When he stopped in the center, his toes were about ten feet above the crocs. The poor boy was crying and screaming. It was awful, just awful. Slowly, a guard turned a crank and down he went. He kicked frantically, as you can imagine. He kicked and screamed for his life but soon his feet were in the water, and the crocs began ripping apart his flesh and bones. The guard kept turning the crank, the boy went farther down. I watched a human being eaten alive.”

He takes a drink and studies the ocean. “Post, there is no way to describe the fear, the absolute horror of watching something as indescribable as that and knowing you’re waiting in a very short line. I wet my boxers. I thought I was going to faint. I wanted to jump but the guards had us. Fear as few people have ever known it. Facing a firing squad must be awful, but at least the killing is over in a flash. Being eaten alive, well.

“Anyway, as they were hitching up the second boy I realized what was obvious—that I had been chosen to go last so I could suffer the nightmare of watching the first two.

“Something else happened. I heard laughter off to my right, on the other side of a small building. Male voices, laughing at the sport, and I wondered how often these good ole boys met here for fun and games. I made a move toward the edge of the platform but a guard yanked me by the hair and threw me against the railing. These guys were burly and nasty and I wasn’t really strong enough to resist, not that it would have worked. I tried to look away but the guard grabbed my hair again and hissed, ‘Look! You look!’

“They shoved the second boy off the tower. He screamed even louder, and when they dangled him above the crocodiles he kicked and bawled something about ‘Maria! Maria!’ When they began to lower him I closed my eyes. The sounds of his flesh ripping and bones cracking were sickening. I finally fainted but it didn’t help my cause. They slapped me viciously, pulled me to my feet, hitched me to the zip line, and shoved me off the tower. I heard the laughter again. When I stopped above the middle of the pond, I glanced down. I told myself not to but I couldn’t help it. Nothing but blood, bone fragments, body parts, and all those frenzied crocodiles wanting more. When I realized I was descending, I thought about my mother and sister and how they would never know what happened to me. And it was good that they would never know. I didn’t scream or yell or cry, but I couldn’t stop kicking. When the first fat croc lunged for my foot, I heard a loud voice call out in Spanish. I began my ascent.

“They lowered me from the tower and put on the blindfold. I was too weak to walk so they found a golf cart. I was thrown back into the same cell where I curled into a ball on the concrete floor and cried and sweated for at least an hour before the guards returned. One knocked me down and pinned my arm against my back while the other injected me with a drug. When I woke up I was back in Belize, in the bed of a pickup truck driven by two cops. We stopped at the jail and I followed them inside. One gave me a cup of coffee while the other explained that my two friends were very worried about me. They had been told that I was in jail for public drunkenness, and that would be the best story to stick with.

“Once my head cleared and I was back at the fishing lodge, I talked to my buddies and tried to put together a time line. I told them I’d been in jail, no big deal, just another adventure. The abduction lasted for about forty hours and I’m sure it involved a boat, a helicopter, and an airplane, but my memory was shot. The drugs. I couldn’t wait to get out of Belize and back home. I’ll never again subject myself to the jurisdiction of a third world country. I quit bonefishing too.”

He stops and gulps some more beer. I’m too stunned to say anything but manage to mumble, “That’s insane.”

“It still causes nightmares. I have to fib to my wife when I wake up yelling. It’s always just under the surface.”

All I can do is shake my head.

“Back in Seabrook, I was a mess. I couldn’t eat or sleep, couldn’t stay at the office. I locked myself in my bedroom and tried to nap, always with a loaded gun. I was exhausted to the point of collapse because I couldn’t sleep. I saw those two boys over and over. I heard their screams, their anguished cries, the horrifying frenzy of the hungry crocs, bones breaking, and laughter off in the distance. I thought about suicide, Post, I really did.”

He drains his bottle and goes to the fridge for more. He sits down and continues, “Somehow, I convinced myself that it was all a dream caused by too much booze and a spiked drink. A month passed and I slowly began to pull things together. Then this arrived in the mail.”

He reaches for a file I had not noticed. As he opens it he says, “Post, I’ve never shown this to anyone.” He hands me an 8x10 color photo. It’s Tyler, in his boxers, dangling from the zip line with his feet just inches above the raging open mouth and jagged teeth of a large crocodile. The terror in his face is indescribable. It’s a close shot, with nothing in the background to indicate place or time.

I gawk at it, then look at Tyler. He’s wiping a tear from a cheek and says in a weak voice, “Look, I need to make a call, okay? It’s business. Grab another beer and I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. There’s more to the story.”

Chapter 23

I put the photo back in the file and leave it on the table, never to see it again, I hope. I walk to the edge of the terrace and gaze at the ocean. There are too many wild thoughts spinning around to grab just one and analyze it. But fear dominates them all. Fear that drove Tyler out of the profession. Fear that keeps his secrets buried. Fear that weakens my knees some twenty years after his abduction.

I’m lost in my thoughts and do not hear him return to the terrace. He startles me with “What’s your main thought right now, Post?” He’s standing beside me with black coffee in a paper cup.

“Why didn’t they just kill you? No one would ever know.”

“The obvious question and one that I’ve had twenty years to think about. My best answer is that they needed me. They had their conviction. Quincy was headed to prison forever. They must have had some concern about his appeal, and since I was writing it they wanted me to back off. And I did. I raised all the obvious legal issues on appeal, but I really toned down the language. I took a knee, Post. I mailed it in. You’ve read it, right?”