The Guardians: The explosive new thriller from international bestseller John Grisham (32 page)

Riley smiles and shakes his head and says, “This is pretty wild.”

“You’ve never heard this gossip?”

“Never. You gotta understand, Mr. Tatum, that Seabrook is only fifteen miles from here, but it might as well be a hundred. Dillon is its own world. A sad little place, really. Folk here just barely hang on, barely get by. We got our own challenges and we don’t have time to worry about what’s happening over in Seabrook, or anywhere else for that matter.”

“I understand that,” Frankie says and takes a sip.

“So, you did fourteen years for somebody else’s murder?” Riley asks in disbelief.

“Yes, fourteen years, three months, eleven days. And Reverend Post came to the rescue. It’s brutal, Riley, locked up and forgotten when you know you’re innocent. That’s why we’re working so hard for Quincy and our other clients. As you know, brother, lots of our people are locked up for stuff they didn’t do.”

“You got that right.” They drink in solidarity.

Frankie presses on. “There might be a chance, probably a slight one, that Kenny had possession of some evidence that was stored behind Pfitzner’s office in Seabrook. His former partner told us this recently. Kenny got wind of a plan to burn the building and destroy the evidence, and he removed some stuff before the fire. If Pfitzner indeed ambushed Kenny, then why did he want him dead? It was because Kenny knew something. Kenny had the evidence. There was no other reason, or at least none that we’ve come across, that explains Pfitzner’s motive.”

Riley is enjoying the story. He says, “So the big question is—what did Kenny do with the evidence? That’s why you’re here, right?”

“You got it. It’s doubtful Kenny would take it home, because that could have endangered his family. Plus he was living in a rental house.”

“And his wife wasn’t too happy there. It was out on Secretary Road, east of Seabrook. Sybil wanted to move to some other place.”

“By the way, we found Sybil in Ocala and she will not talk to us. Not a word.”

“A nice lady, always had a smile for me, anyway. I haven’t seen Sybil in years, don’t suppose I ever will. So, Mr. Tatum—”

“Please, Frankie.”

“So, Frankie, you’re thinking Kenny might have brought the stuff back to the home place, just down the road, and hid it there, right?”

“The list of possible hiding places is short, Riley. If Kenny had something to hide, something valuable, he would have wanted to keep it somewhere safe and accessible. Makes sense, right? Does the old house have an attic or a basement?”

Riley shakes his head. “There’s no basement. I’m not sure but I think there’s an attic. Never seen it, never been up there.” He takes a sip and says, “This seems like a real goose chase to me, Frankie.”

Frankie laughs and says, “Oh, we specialize in goose chases. We waste tons of time digging through haystacks. But, occasionally, we find something.”

Riley finishes his lemonade, slowly gets to his feet, and begins pacing around the room as if suddenly burdened. He stops and looks down at Frankie and says, “You can’t go into that house. It’s too dangerous.”

“It’s been abandoned for years.”

“By real people, but there are plenty of folk moving around. Spirits, ghosts, the place is haunted, Frankie. I’ve seen it for myself. I’m a poor man with a few bucks in the bank, but I wouldn’t walk into that house at high noon with a gun in my hand for a thousand dollars cash. Nobody in our family will either.”

Riley’s eyes are wide with fear and his finger shakes as he points it at Frankie, who is momentarily dumbstruck. Riley walks to the fridge, pulls out two more bottles, hands one to Frankie and sits down. He breathes deeply as he closes his eyes, as if gathering strength for a long-winded tale. Finally, he begins, “Vida, my grandmother, was raised by her grandmother in a Negro settlement ten miles from here. It’s gone now. Vida was born in 1925. Her grandmother was born back in the 1870s when a lot of folk still had kin who were born in slavery. Her grandmother practiced witchcraft and African voodoo, which was common back then. Her religion was a mix of Christian gospel and old-world spiritualism. She was a midwife and the local nurse who could whip up salves and ointments and herbal teas to cure just about anything. Vida was profoundly influenced by this woman and throughout her life she, too, considered herself to be a spiritual master, though she knew better than to use the word ‘witch.’ Are you with me, Frankie?”

He was, but they were wasting time now. Frankie nodded earnestly and said, “Sure. Fascinating.”

“I’m giving you the quick version, but there’s a big thick book about Vida. She was a frightening woman. She loved her kids and grandkids and ruled the family, but she had a dark, mysterious side too. I’ll give you one story. Her daughter, Ramona, my aunt, died at thirty-six, you saw her tombstone. When Ramona was young, about fourteen or so, she was raped by a boy from Dillon, a bad kid. Everybody knew him. The family was upset as you might guess, but didn’t want to go to the sheriff. Vida didn’t trust the white man’s justice. She said she would handle things herself. Kenny found her one night, at midnight under a full moon, in the backyard going through some voodoo ritual. She was tapping a small drum, with gourds around her neck and snakeskins around her bare feet, and chanting in an unknown tongue. Later, she told Kenny that she put a hex on the boy who raped Ramona. Word got out and everybody, well at least all the black folk, in Dillon knew the boy was cursed. A few months later he got burned alive in a car wreck, and from then on people ran from Vida. She was much feared.”

Frankie absorbs this without a word.

“Over the years she got crazier, and we finally had no choice. We hired a lawyer in Seabrook to get her committed. She was furious with the family and threatened us. Threatened the lawyer and the judge. We were terrified. They couldn’t do anything with her at the asylum and she talked her way out. She told us to stay away from her and the house, and we did.”

Frankie manages to say, “She died in 1998, according to the obituary.”

“That was the year, no one knows the day. My cousin Wendell got concerned and went to the house, found her lying peacefully in the middle of her bed, sheets pulled up to her chin. Dead for days. She left a note with instructions to bury her next to her children, with no funeral or ceremony. She also wrote that her last act on this earth was to put a curse on the house. Sad to say, but we were relieved when she died. We buried her in a hurry, in a thunderstorm, a quick service with just the family, and the moment we lowered her into the ground lightning hit a tree in the cemetery and we jumped out of our skin. I’ve never been so scared in my life, and never so happy to see a casket get covered with dirt.”

Riley takes a long drink and wipes his mouth with the back of a hand. “That was my grandmother, Vida. We called her Granny, but most of the kids around here called her Voodoo behind her back.”

In a voice as firm as possible, Frankie says, “We need to see the attic.”

“You’re crazy, man.”

“Who’s got the key?”

“I do, but I haven’t stepped inside in years. The electricity was cut off long ago, but you can sometimes see lights at night. Lights moving around. Only a fool would walk through those doors.”

“I need some air.” They step outside into the heat and walk to their vehicles. Riley says, “You know, this is weird. Kenny’s been dead for twenty years and nobody from the outside has shown any interest. Now, in less than a week, you and two others come snooping around.”

“Two others?”

“Two white dudes showed up last week, asking questions about Kenny. Where did he grow up? Where did he live? Where is he buried? I didn’t like them and I played dumb, gave ’em nothing.”

“Where were they from?”

“I didn’t ask. I got the impression they wouldn’t tell me anyway.”

Chapter 38

Quincy’s first surgery is a six-hour repair job piecing together a shoulder and collarbone. It goes well and the doctors are pleased. I sit with him for hours as he recovers. His battered body is mending well and some of his memory is returning, though the attack is still a black hole. I do not tell him what we know about Drummik and Robert Earl Lane, or Adam Stone and Skip DiLuca. He’s heavily medicated and is not ready for the rest of the story.

There is a guard of some variety sitting by his door around the clock, often more than one. Hospital security, prison guards, Orlando police, and FBI. They take turns and I enjoy chatting them up. It breaks the monotony. I often marvel at the cost of it all. Fifty thousand dollars a year to keep him in prison, for twenty-three years now. A drop in the bucket to what the taxpayers are now spending to keep him alive and fix up his wounds. Not to mention the security. Millions, and all wasted on an innocent man who should never have been incarcerated in the first place.

I’m napping on the rollaway cot in his room early one morning when my phone buzzes. Agent Nolton asks if I’m in town. She has something to show me. I drive to her office and follow her to a large conference room where a tech guy is waiting.

He dims the lights and, still standing, we look at a large screen. A face appears—Hispanic male, age about sixty, ruggedly handsome with fierce dark eyes and a salt-and-pepper beard. Agnes says, “Name is Ramon Vasquez, longtime senior management in the Saltillo Cartel, sort of semiretired now.”

“The name is familiar,” I say.

“Hang on.” She clicks and another image appears, an aerial of a small resort tucked into the side of a mountain that is surrounded by the bluest water in the world. “This is where he spends most of his time. The island is Martinique, French West Indies. The getaway is called Oriole Bay Resort, owned by one of a million faceless companies domiciled in Panama.” She splits the screen and the face of Mickey Mercado appears. “Three days ago our friend here used a Honduran passport to fly to Martinique where he met with Vasquez at the resort. We showed up but couldn’t get in, and that was probably a good thing. The next day Mercado used a Bolivian passport to return to Miami through San Juan.”

It hits hard. “Vasquez was the boyfriend of Diana Russo,” I say.

“Still is. They’ve been together since about the time of her dear husband’s untimely death.” She clicks again. Mercado disappears and half of the screen is black. The other half is still the island. “No pictures of Diana. According to what we’ve been able to piece together, and I won’t bore you with stories of how shaky intelligence can be anywhere in the Caribbean, they spend most of their time living in luxurious seclusion at their resort. She sort of runs the place but keeps an extremely low profile. They also travel a lot, all over the world. DEA is not sure if their travels are related to trafficking, or if they just want to get off the island. They think Vasquez is past his prime but still does a little consulting. Could be that the Russo murder happened on his watch and he’s expected to clean up the mess. Or, it could be that he is still active in the business. Whatever he does, he’s extremely careful.”

I back to a chair, fall into it, and mumble, “So she was involved.”

“Well, we don’t know for sure, but she suddenly looks a lot guiltier. She renounced her American citizenship fifteen years ago and became a full-fledged citizen of Panama. Probably cost her fifty grand. New name is Diana Sanchez but I’ll bet she has others. Who knows how many passports. No record that she and Ramon have ever officially tied the knot. Apparently, they have not reproduced. Seen enough?”

“Is there more?”

“Oh yes.”

The FBI was monitoring Mercado and was preparing to arrest him when he made an inexplicable blunder. He picked up the wrong phone and made a call to a number that cannot be traced. The conversation, though, was recorded. Mercado suggested to the man on the other end that they meet at a crab shack in Key Largo for lunch the following day. Moving with a speed that is remarkable and makes me happy to be on the same side as the FBI, Nolton got a warrant and her agents arrived first. They photographed Mercado in the parking lot, filmed him eating crabs with his contact, and photographed both as they got into their cars. The late-model Volvo SUV is registered to Bradley Pfitzner.

On film, he looks to be in decent shape, with a gray goatee and waves of gray hair. Retiring in luxury seems to be suiting him well. He’s almost eighty years old, but moves like a much younger man.

Nolton says, “Congratulations, Post. We finally have the link.”

I am too stunned to speak. She says, “Of course we can’t indict Pfitzner for having lunch, but we’ll get warrants and we’ll know when he takes a pee.”

I say, “Be careful. He’s pretty savvy.”

“Yes, but even the smartest criminals do dumb things. Meeting with Mercado is a gift.”

“No clue that Pfitzner has any contact with DiLuca?” I ask.

“None whatsoever. I’ll bet my paycheck that Pfitzner does not even know DiLuca’s name. Mercado moves in the dark world where he knew about the Aryans and arranged the hit. Pfitzner probably supplied the cash, but we’ll never prove it unless Mercado sings. And guys like him do not rat.”

I’m overwhelmed and struggle to keep things in order. My first reaction is “What a train wreck. In the span of three days Mercado leads you to Ramon and Diana Russo, and then to Bradley Pfitzner.”

Agnes nods along, quite proud of their progress but too businesslike to gloat. “Some of the puzzle is coming together, but there’s a long way to go. Gotta run. I’ll keep you posted.” She’s off to another meeting, and the tech guy leaves me alone in the room. For a long time I sit in the dim light and stare at the wall and try to process these bombshells. Agnes is right in that we suddenly know a lot more about the conspiracy to murder Keith, but how much can be proven? And how much can help Quincy?