Lifeguard

Chapter 61

A LOT OF THINGS had shocked me since I left Tess’s suite at the Brazilian Court and thought my life was about to take off. But what could Stratton’s wife have to do with Tess?

Ellie and I had settled on a code if I needed to contact her at the of?ce. I’d use the name Steve, as in McQueen. And I did, ?rst thing the following morning. I told her what Champ had told me.

“I think we have to talk to Liz Stratton, Ellie.”

“First,” she said, “I think we have to ?nd out who Liz Stratton really is.”

I had a trump card I’d been holding back, and I was thinking now might be the time to use it. “I may have a way.”

“No, you don’t do anything,” Ellie shot back. “You stay put. I’ll get you when I know something. You comprende, Steve?”

So I played it like a good little fugitive. I spent the day holed up in the small room above Geoff’s garage, picking through some microwave lasagna and his John D. MacDonald crime novels, watching the news on TV. The next day, too. Ellie didn’t return my calls. I felt like Anne Frank hiding from the Germans. Except it wasn’t just the Germans who were after me, it was the whole world. And it wasn’t some doctor’s family who was protecting me, or Brahms I was hearing through the walls, but some loony cycle racer blaring U2, revving up his Ducati.

Late that next afternoon, Geoff banged on the ?oor. “Team meeting,” he yelled. “Coming up the stairs. You decent, mate?”

I ?gured “decent” meant my T-shirt and boxers, and “team meeting” was “beer time, four P.M.” I swung open the door.

To my surprise, there was Ellie, and Geoff hanging back with a grin.

“I want to thank you, mate, for your keen sense of discretion in keeping it just between us, and the fucking FBI, that you are here.”

“Guess you two have met,” I said, kicking open the door. I scrambled around for a second, putting my legs into a pair of jeans.

Ellie peeked around the disgusting storage room – boxes of spare parts; cycle catalogs strewn all over the ?oor; the unmade cot I’d slept in – trying to ?nd a place to sit. “Nice digs…”

“Thanks,” Geoff said, kicking a box of twisted rims out of the way. “Used it many times myself. And I have to admit,” Champ said, nodding, approvingly at me, “when you said FBI agent, Neddie, I wasn’t exactly thinking Jodie Foster.”

She did look cute in a black suit and pink top, but not very cheery. “What’d you ?nd out about Liz?”

“Not much.” She took a beer and tipped it obligingly toward Geoff. “The woman’s untouchable. Her maiden name’s O’Callahan. An old Florida family. Lawyers and judges, mostly. About as private and in?uential as you can get. She went to Vanderbilt, worked for a while at her daddy’s law ?rm. She married Stratton about eighteen years ago. I’m told she was his access into the circles that ?nanced many of his business deals.”

“We have to talk to her, Ellie.”

“I tried,” Ellie sighed. “I wanted to question her without drawing the attention of my of?ce. But I hit a wall with the family lawyer. Only with Stratton present, and even then only with a presubmitted list of questions.”

“Christ, the tart’s tighter than a nun in a condom factory,” Geoff said, then gulped a swig of his beer.

“Nice,” Ellie scrunched up her nose. “Stratton keeps her totally under wraps. She doesn’t even go out for lunch without guards. I don’t have enough to bring her in for questioning.”

“Jesus, Ellie, you’re the FBI…”

“What do you want me to do, run this by my boss? What we need is someone in her circle. Someone who can get to her. Make her talk. And I don’t have any contacts there.”

As I said, I had a trump card. And it wasn’t worth holding any longer. I rolled the beer bottle around in my hands. “I may have a way.”

Chapter 62

SOMEONE SAYS HE’S your friend, but you never really know. Life has taught me that there are always barriers that get in the way. Like the rich siding with the rich, whatever side they’re on. What is it I hear the English say? There are no lifelong friends, or lifelong enemies. Only lifelong interests. And I guess you never know what those interests are until you try.

So the next morning I made the call. I might as well have been a sixteen-year-old asking a girl out for the ?rst time. I was never so nervous dialing a number in my life.

“It’s me, Neddie.” My mouth went dry as soon as I heard him answer.

I waited. No reply. I started worrying I had made a mistake. I could be getting us all in an awful lot of trouble.

“You sure dropped the hose in the deep end – for a pool boy,” Sollie Roth ?nally sighed.

I didn’t laugh. He didn’t mean for me to. That was Sollie’s way of being dead-on serious. “You said something, Sollie, as I drove away. You said a man doesn’t run off in the middle of the night. That no problem was too big to solve. Maybe I should’ve listened to you. I know how things look now. What I need to know is, do you still mean that, Sollie?”

“I never turned you in, son, if that’s what you’re looking for. I said I was sleeping when you took off.”

“I know that,” I said, feeling a little ashamed. “Thanks.”

“No thanks needed,” he said matter-of-factly. “I know people, kid. And I know you didn’t do those crimes.”

For a second I hung my head away from the phone. I swallowed thickly. “I didn’t, Sollie. I swear to God. But I need some help to prove it. Can I trust you, Sollie?”

“You can trust this, Ned,” the old man said. “I’ve been where you are now, and I learned that the only thing that’s gonna keep you from spending the rest of your life in prison comes down to the quality of your friends. You have those kinds of friends, Neddie-boy?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. My lips were dry. “What kind are you, Sollie?”

I heard him chuckle. “In matters like this,” Sol Roth said, then paused. “The highest, kid. The highest.”

Chapter 63

“SO WHO ARE WE meeting here?” Geoff pulled the bike into the parking lot across the street from St. Edward’s Church and cut the ignition.

Green’s was a luncheonette/pharmacy situated on North County, a sleepy throwback to a bygone time. When JFK was president and Palm Beach held the Winter White House, Kennedy and Washington staffers would party all night, attend early mass at St. Ed’s, then spill into Green’s for a jolt of joe and some waitress sass while still in their tuxes.

The man we were meeting was sitting in his corner booth, under the window, wearing a powder blue V-necked sweater and golf shirt, a Kangol hat next to him, his thinning white hair plastered tight against his scalp. He had the Wall Street Journal open and wore a pair of reading glasses.

He looked more like some retired accountant checking his stocks than the man who was going to save my life.

“So, you got some kind of ringer, mate?” Champ elbowed me, sweeping the room for whom we were going to meet. “That’s why you’re holed up with me. Someone really on the inside.”

“I told you, Champ, trust me.”