The Guardians(42)

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.