“Mr. Lanigan,” he finally said, deeply and slowly. For the next thirty minutes, everything would be said in slow motion. “You have filed several motions.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Sandy said. “Our first is a motion
to reduce the charges from capital murder to mutilating a corpse.”
The words echoed through the still courtroom. Mutilating a corpse?
“Mr. Parrish,” His Honor said. It had been agreed that Parrish would do the bulk of the talking. The burden would be his to explain to the court, for the record, and, more important, for the press and the citizenry listening out there.
He did a wonderful job of detailing recent developments. Wasn’t a murder, after all, but something far less. The state did not oppose the reduction of charges, because it no longer believed that Mr. Lanigan killed anyone. He paced around the courtroom in his best Perry Mason routine, unshackled by the customary rules of etiquette and procedure. He was the spin doctor for all sides.
“Next, we have a motion by the defendant for this court to accept a plea of guilty to the charge of mutilating a corpse. Mr. Parrish?”
The second act was similar to the first, with Parrish relishing the story of poor old Clovis. Patrick could feel the heated stares as Parrish delighted in as many details as Sandy had given them. “At least I didn’t kill anyone!” Patrick wanted to scream.
“How do you plead, Mr. Lanigan?” His Honor asked.
“Guilty,” Patrick said, firmly but with no pride.
“Does the state have a recommended sentence?” the Judge asked the prosecutor.
Parrish walked to his table, fumbled through his notes, paced back toward the bench, and along the way finally said, “Yes, Your Honor. I have a letter from
a Ms. Deena Postell of Meridian, Mississippi. She is the only surviving grandchild of Clovis Goodman.” He handed a copy to Trussel as if it were something brand-new. “In the letter, Ms. Postell pleads with this court not to prosecute Mr. Lanigan for burning her grandfather’s corpse. He’s been dead for over four years, and the family cannot survive any more suffering and agony. Evidently, Ms. Postell was quite close to her grandfather, and took his death very hard.”
Patrick cut his eyes at Sandy. Sandy wasn’t about to look at Patrick.
“Have you spoken with her?” the Judge asked.
“Yes. About an hour ago. She became quite emotional on the phone, and pleaded with me not to reopen this sad case. She vowed that she would not testify in any trial, nor would she cooperate with the prosecution in any way.” Parrish again walked to his table and rifled through some more papers. He spoke to the Judge but addressed the courtroom. “Given the feelings of the family, it is the recommendation of the state that the defendant be sentenced to serve twelve months in jail, that the incarceration be suspended pending good behavior, that he pay a fine of five thousand dollars and all court costs, and be placed on probation.”
“Mr. Lanigan, do you agree with this sentence?” Trussel asked.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Patrick said, barely able to lift his head.
“It is so ordered. Anything further?” Trussel picked up his gavel, and waited. Both lawyers shook their heads.
“We are adjourned,” he said, rapping it loudly.
Patrick turned and made a quick exit from the courtroom. Gone again, vanished before their very eyes.
He waited with Sandy for an hour in Huskey’s office while darkness settled in and the last of the courtroom stragglers reluctantly gave it up and went home. Patrick was anxious to leave.
At seven, he said a long, fond good-bye to Karl. He thanked him for being there, for standing by him, for everything, and he promised to keep in touch. On his way out the door, he also thanked him again for serving as one of his pallbearers.
“Anytime,” Karl said. “Anytime.”
They left Biloxi in Sandy’s Lexus—Sandy at the wheel, Patrick sitting low in the passenger’s seat, subdued and taking in for the last time the lights along the Gulf. They passed the casinos on the beaches at Biloxi and Gulfport, the pier at Pass Christian, and then the lights spread out as they crossed the Bay of St. Louis.
Sandy handed him the phone number, and he called her hotel. It was 3 A.M. in London, but she grabbed the phone as if she were watching it. “Eva, it’s me,” he said, with restraint. Sandy almost stopped the car so he could get out while they talked. He tried not to listen.
“We’re leaving Biloxi now, on the way to New Orleans. Yes, I’m fine. I’ve never felt better. And you?”
He listened for a long time, his eyes closed, his head leaning back.
“What’s today?” he asked.
“Friday, November sixth,” Sandy said.
“I’ll meet you in Aix, at the Villa Gallici, on Sunday. Right. Yes. I’m fine, dear. I love you. Go back to sleep, and I’ll call you in a few hours.”
They crossed into Louisiana in silence, and somewhere over Lake Pontchartrain, Sandy said, “I had a very interesting visitor this afternoon.”
“Really, who?”
“Jack Stephano.”
“Here, in Biloxi?”
“Yes. He found me at the hotel, said he was finished with the Aricia case and was on his way to Florida for a vacation.”
“Why didn’t you kill him?”
“He said he was sorry. Said his boys got a little carried away down there when they caught you, wanted me to pass along his apologies.”
“What a guy. I’m sure he didn’t stop by just to apologize.”
“No, he didn’t. He told me about the mole in Brazil, about the Pluto Group and the rewards, and he asked me point-blank if the girl, Eva, was your Judas. I said I had no idea.”
“Why does he care?”
“Good question. He said his curiosity has the best of him. He paid over a million bucks in rewards, got his man, but didn’t get the money, and he said he won’t be able to sleep until he knows. I sort of believed him.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“He doesn’t have a dog in the fight anymore, or something like that. His words, not mine.”
Patrick put his left ankle on his right knee, and
gently touched the burn. “What does he look like?” he asked.
“Fifty-five, very Italian, lots of groomed gray hair, black eyes, a handsome man. Why?”
“Because I’ve seen him everywhere. For the last three years, half the strangers I’ve seen in the outback of Brazil have been Jack Stephano. I’ve been chased in my sleep by a hundred men, all of whom turned out to be Jack Stephano. He has ducked in alleys, hidden behind trees, followed on foot at night in São Paulo, tagged behind me on motor scooters and chased me in cars. I’ve thought about Stephano more than I have my own mother.”
“The chase is over.”
“I finally got tired of it, Sandy. I gave up. Life on the run is quite an adventure, very thrilling and romantic, until you learn that someone is back there. While you’re sleeping, someone is trying to find you. While you’re having dinner with a wonderful woman in a city of ten million, someone is knocking on doors, quietly showing your photo to a clerk, offering small bribes for information. I stole too much money, Sandy. They had to come after me, and when I learned they were already in Brazil, I knew the end would come.”
“What do you mean, you gave up?”
Patrick breathed heavily and shifted his weight. He looked through his window at the waters below, and tried to organize his thoughts. “I gave up, Sandy. I got tired of running, and I gave up.”
“Yeah, I’ve already heard that.”
“I knew they would find me, so I decided to do it on my terms, not theirs.”
“I’m listening.”
“The rewards were my idea, Sandy. Eva would fly to Madrid, then to Atlanta, where she would meet with the boys from Pluto. They were paid to contact Stephano and handle the flow of information and money. We milked the money out of Stephano, and eventually led him to me, to my little house in Ponta Porã.”
Sandy turned slowly, his face blank, mouth open and crooked to one side, his eyes vacant.
“Watch where you’re going,” Patrick said, pointing to the road.
Sandy jerked the wheel and brought the car back into the right lane. “You’re lying,” he said without moving his lips. “I know you’re lying.”
“Nope. We collected one million, one hundred fifty thousand bucks from Stephano, and it’s hidden now, probably in Switzerland with the rest of it.”
“You don’t know where it is?”
“She’s been taking care of it. I’ll find out when I see her.”
Sandy was too shocked to say anything else. Patrick decided to help. “I knew they would grab me, and I knew they would try to make me talk. But I had no idea this would happen.” He pointed to the burn above his left ankle. “I thought it might get ugly, but they damned near killed me, Sandy. They finally broke me, and I told them about Eva. By then, she was gone, and so was the money.”
“You could’ve easily been killed,” Sandy managed to say. He was driving with his right hand, scratching his head with his left.
“That’s true. Very true. But two hours after I was
captured, the FBI in Washington knew Stephano had me. That’s what saved my life. Stephano couldn’t kill me, because the feds knew about it.”
“But how—”
“Eva called Cutter in Biloxi. He called Washington.
Sandy wanted to stop the car, get out and scream. Lean over the side of the bridge, and let flow an endless string of blue profanities. Just when he thought he had been clued in to Patrick’s past, this latest twist came crashing in.
“You were a damned fool if you let them catch you.”
“Oh really. Did I not just walk out of the courtroom a free man? Did I not just talk with a woman I love dearly, a woman who happens to be keeping a small fortune for me? The past is finally gone, Sandy. Don’t you see? There’s no one looking for me anymore.”
“So many things could’ve gone wrong.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t. I had the money, the tapes, the Clovis alibi. And I had four years to plan everything.”
“The torture wasn’t planned.”
“No, but the scars will heal. Don’t ruin the moment, Sandy. I’m on a roll.”
Sandy dropped him off at his mother’s house, his childhood home, where a cake was in the oven. Mrs. Lanigan asked him to stay, but he knew they needed time alone. Plus he hadn’t seen his wife and kids in four days. Sandy drove away, his brain still swirling.
Forty-three
He awoke before sunrise in a bed he hadn’t slept in in almost twenty years, in a room he hadn’t seen in almost ten. The years were distant, another lifetime. The walls were closer together now, the ceiling lower. Over the years his things had been removed, the boyhood memorabilia, the Saints banners, the posters of blond models in tight swimsuits.
As the product of two people who rarely spoke to each other, he had made his room his sanctuary. He’d kept the door locked long before his teen years. His parents entered only when he allowed them.
His mother was cooking downstairs; the smell of bacon drifted throughout the house. They had stayed up late; now she was up early, anxious to talk. And who could blame her?
He stretched slowly and carefully. The crusted skin around his burns cracked and pulled. Too much of a stretch and the skin broke, and the bleeding started.
He touched the burns on his chest, desperately wanting to dig in with his fingernails and scratch with a fury. He crossed his feet and locked his hands behind his head. He smiled at the ceiling, an arrogant smile because life on the run was now over. Patrick and Danilo were gone, and the shadows behind them had been destroyed in a crushing defeat. Stephano and Aricia and Bogan et al., and the feds and Parrish with his insipid little indictment, all had been laid to waste. There was no one left to chase him.
Sunlight eased through the window, and the walls inched together. He showered quickly and treated his wounds with a cream and fresh gauze.
He had promised his mother some new grandchildren, a fresh batch of them to take the place of Ashley Nicole, a child she still dreamed of seeing again. He told her wonderful things about Eva, and promised to bring her to New Orleans in the very near future. No definite plans to get married, but it was inevitable.
They ate waffles and bacon and drank coffee on the patio as the old streets came to life. Before the neighbors could begin stopping by to applaud the good news, they left for a long drive. Patrick wanted to at least see his city again, if only briefly.
At nine, he and his mother walked into Robilio Brothers on Canal, where he bought new khakis and shirts and a handsome leather travel bag. They ate beignets at Café du Monde on Decatur, then a late lunch at a nearby café.
They sat at his gate at the airport for an hour, holding hands and saying little. When his flight was called, Patrick hugged his mother tightly and promised to
call every day. She wanted to see the new grandkids, and quickly, she said, with a sad smile.
He flew to Atlanta. Using his legitimate Patrick Lanigan passport, given to Sandy by Eva, he boarded a flight to Nice.
He had last seen Eva a month earlier, in Rio, over a long weekend in which they spent every moment together. The chase was almost over and Patrick knew it. The end was near.
They clung to each other as they walked the crowded beaches of Ipanema and Leblon, ignoring the happy voices around them. They had late, quiet dinners in their favorite restaurants—Antiquarius and Antonio’s—but they had little appetite for food. When they spoke, the sentences were soft and short. The long conversations ended in tears.
At one point, she had convinced him to flee again, to leave with her while he was still able, to hide in a castle in Scotland or a tiny apartment in Rome, where no one would ever find them. But the moment passed. He was simply tired of running.
Late in the afternoon, they rode a cable car to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain to watch the sunset over Rio. The view of the city at night was spectacular, but difficult to appreciate under the circumstances. He held her closely as the wind chilled them, and he promised her that some day, when it was all over, they would stand in this exact spot, and watch the sunset, and plan their future. She tried to believe him.
They said good-bye on a street corner, near her apartment. He kissed her on the forehead and walked
away, into the crowd. He left her crying there because it was better than a messy scene at the crowded airport. He left the city, and flew west, changing flights as the planes and airports got smaller. He arrived in Ponta Porã after dark, found his Beetle parked where he’d left it at the airport, and drove the quiet streets to Rua Tiradentes, to his modest home, where he arranged his things, and began his wait.