“Kidd,” said Eddie. “But we didn’t know that at the time. All we knew then was his nickname.”
“What was it?”
“JFK.”
Brice sat straighter in his chair, just a little, and lowered his gaze. His hand went to the desk drawer, opened it, took out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one, inhaled deeply, blew smoke. Some came through his nose and mouth, some through the white-mesh screen.
“Now do you remember?” Eddie said.
Brice shook his head. “Kind of a funny nickname, that’s all.”
The brassy-haired woman came through the door carrying a file, stopped dead. “God in heaven,” she said. “Look what you’re doing.”
Brice glanced down at the cigarette in his hand, then glared at her. “I got a client in here, Rita.” A blue wisp curled through the mesh screen. She dropped the file on the desk and left without another word.
“Not married, are you?” Brice asked.
“No.”
“Neither’s Rita, soon as her next divorce goes through.” Eddie didn’t respond. Brice opened the file. There was a single sheet of lined yellow notepad paper inside. Handwriting filled the top third. The rest was blank. It didn’t seem like a lot for Mr. Trimble’s thousand dollars.
“That’s it?” Eddie said.
Brice looked up from the file. “The investigation was unsuccessful, as you said.”
“You must have discovered something.”
Brice closed the file. “Not a thing.”
“Or eliminated some possibilities. Even that could help.” Eddie dug some bills out of his pocket, counted out fifty dollars, laid it on the desk.
Brice put his hand on the file. “Does your brother know you’re here?”
“No.”
“Plan to see him?”
“No.”
“Know where he is?”
“I don’t know what’s on your mind, Brice. My brother’s dead.”
“You kill him?”
The next thing Eddie knew he was on his feet, standing over the old man.
“Don’t,” said Brice. The tone was harsh and commanding, but that was just the machinery; his eyes were full of fear.
Eddie didn’t touch him. He just picked up the file and took it to the window. Down on the street a cop was tucking a parking ticket under the windshield wiper on Jack’s car. Eddie withdrew the single sheet of paper from the file and read it.
The date was on the top line. Then:
Nye, Jack. Intview #1.
Retainer $250-bank check.
Brother-Eddie (Edw. Nicholas) 5-15 drugs (mj)
Atty.-Glenn Weems, Smith amp; Weems, Ft. L. (who $$$?)
Nds. dvlp. new evdnce re: “JFK”
Bahamas-Saint Amour-Galleon Bch.
DEA-tip? Eddie N.-enemies? J. N. says no.
What about “JFK” as poss. enemy? Doesn’t kn.
“JFK” had mj patch.
But
That was all.
“Where’s the rest of it?” Eddie said, moving in front of the desk.
Brice shook his head.
“But these are just your notes from the first meeting. It doesn’t say what you did or where you went.”
“I didn’t do anything, didn’t go anywhere.”
“Why not?” Eddie ran his eyes over the page again. “And I know he paid you a grand, not two-fifty.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this.”
“But,” Eddie said. The word that closed the file.
“But your brother’s dead, so maybe you have a right to know.”
“Know what?”
“That I was just following his directions.”
Eddie didn’t understand; all the same, the icy feeling crept across his back and up his neck.
“And two-fifty was all he gave me, I don’t know about any grand.”
“Gave you to do what?” Eddie said.
“Nothing. He said money had been raised and it had to be spent”-Brice gasped for air-“but that you and this JFK were partners-he grew it, you ran it-and you were as guilty as he was. So no confession from him would do you”-another gulp of air-“any good.”
Eddie backed into the chair in front of the desk, almost sat down.
“You’re lying,” he said. His legs didn’t want to hold him up. He made them.
Brice shook his head. “When you mentioned JFK it all came back. I couldn’t forget a thing like that.” Pause for breath. “Only time it happened in thirty-six years.” Brice’s gaze went to the fifty dollars on the desk, then to Eddie. “JFK was lying low in Nassau, according to your brother. I guess your fifty buys that much.” He took another deep breath, but said no more.
Eddie folded the sheet of yellow paper, stuck it in his pocket, picked up the backpack. He remembered Brice’s letter-“our best efforts to locate the individual known as JFK have to this point in time been unsuccessful”-and didn’t think he owed Brice a penny, but he left the money where it was. He didn’t want to touch it.
Rita looked up from her magazine as he went by.
“Can you believe him?” she said. “I tell him, ‘Pa, how can you still smoke after everything that happened to you?’ He just ignores me. He’s such an idiot, sometimes.”
“That’s one of his minor flaws,” Eddie said.
30
Do most lives turn on one crucial event? Eddie didn’t think so. But some did-the Mariner’s for one, and his own for another. Now, after talking to Brice, Eddie knew that he didn’t understand his own crucial event any better than he did the Mariner’s. His imprisonment wasn’t simply the result of bad luck and a twisted chain of circumstance, as he had always thought. That left a lot of questions, questions that Jack could have answered.
The twin-engine Piper followed its shadow southeast across a sea smooth as Jell-O. Blue marked deep water, green the sandy shallows, red-brown the coral heads. A long white cruiser cut across the surface on the same course as the plane, like a tab opening a zipper. The shadow of the plane darkened the boat and left it behind.
“There’s beer in the cooler,” the pilot called from the cockpit.
“No, thanks,” Eddie said.
“Mind grabbing one for me?” Pause. “Little joke.”
The pilot looked back at Eddie to see if he got it. He had watery eyes and a puffy face; perhaps the cooler was for the return trip, solo.
“Good thing,” Eddie said. “I’m with the National Safety Board.”
There was no talk after that. The Bahamas appeared like emeralds on blue velvet, and soon came Saint Amour, as he remembered it, banana shaped and outlined in white. The pilot descended, banked, flew so low that
