It was a typical reaction for an assault victim. It was also a symptom. The rich man’s brain was reassembling his self-image, piece by piece, as he transitioned through predictable stages. He had been apologetic, then ingratiating. Pride, indignation and anger would reboot next. Myles would become increasingly contentious or closemouthed. I had to short-circuit that process. There was more I wanted to know.
I shifted lanes, looking for a place to turn around, then flicked the turn signal.
“What are you doing?”
I said, “Taking you back.”
“Not to that goddamn dirt road!”
“I should’ve done what they hired me to do.”
Myles slapped the dash, then leaned his head on his forearms. “Jesus Christ! Haven’t I been through enough? It would be easier if you asked questions. Instead, you just sit there hardly saying a word. You do it on purpose. You know it drives me crazy.”
I said, “When you stack the lies high enough, they’ll implode. That’s when I ask questions.”
“Go to hell,” he said, but got serious when he realized I was still slowing to turn.
“ Jesus! Okay, I’ll tell the story again. But who the hell do you think you are, treating me this way? Do you have any idea who I am?”
I said, “Let me guess: You’re rich and you know a lot of powerful people.”
“An understatement. You have no idea.”
“Guys like you,” I said, baiting him, “you’re all the same. You lie to feel important. Next, you’ll start bragging about all the sports stars and famous politicians you know. Buddies from some yacht club or some rich-kid fraternity who can bury me if you just say the word.” My tone told him Bullshit, but I didn’t hit it too hard. I wanted him to talk about Skull and Bones.
Myles said, “If I told you how many senators and presidents that’re in my fraternity, you wouldn’t believe me.”
I replied, “Then don’t bother.”
He was shaking his head, letting me know how dense I was. “My beach house where you jumped me? Three neighbors are from the same fraternity. One’s a federal judge, one’s on the board of the International Bank and the other’s a leading member of Congress. That’s who you’re dealing with. Now do you understand?”
I asked, “A congressman? What’s the name?’ ”
His reply was a snorting noise of refusal.
“Fraternity boys,” I said, “secret handshakes and drinking songs. Big deal.
Nels, you’re the guy who’s going to start at the beginning of the story and not stop until you get to the end.”
He made a blowing sound of frustration, his temper rallying, but he did what I told him to do. This time, he added a few key details.
Two weeks before, Myles had received the first of several anonymous phone calls. Adult male, Spanish accent: the Cuban interrogator. The Cuban claimed he knew what had happened to Annie Sylvester. Then he proved it by providing details that couldn’t have been gathered from an old police report.
The Cuban demanded that Myles send him a quarter million dollars U.S., converted into euros, to a Havana address through DSL, an international carrier. He wanted the money sent in three separate packages to increase the odds of at least one package arriving. If Myles didn’t cooperate, the Cuban told him, he would send a letter telling police exactly where to find the girl’s body.
“He told me I would never hear from him again if I paid,” Myles said in a monotone to let me know how tiresome this was. “But I’m not stupid. I’ve been through it before and I knew he’d want more. But I assumed it would be money, not helping him commit a felony.”
We were on East Venice Road, a quiet four-lane lined with sable palms. Manatee Civic Center and Desoto Square Mall were to the north, the entrance to Falcon Landing only a few miles away.
“You’re almost home,” I told him. “Keep talking.”
Five days ago, Myles continued, on January twentieth-two days before the kidnapping-the Cuban telephoned again. This time, it was from a pay phone in the United States, a 305 area code-Miami. Myles said he’d checked.
The Cuban said that he and a couple of friends would be arriving on Long Island-at Shelter Point Stables-in two days. They had purchased a crate of illegal weapons and had found a buyer, but the timing had to be right. Because there was a chance the boat they were meeting might not show, the Cuban told Myles he wanted a pit dug where he could cache the weapons until later. He also told him to have his plane fueled and ready in case they needed to fly out fast.
The pit the Cuban ordered dug was to be six by eight feet and six feet deep-Will Chaser’s grave. When Myles told him it would draw less attention if the pit was big enough for a horse, the man said that would be okay.
“By then,” Myles said, “I think he was already worried about how they were going to get out of the country. It was just a feeling I had. His English wasn’t great, but he mentioned me being a pilot often enough to make me suspicious. But I didn’t want to do anything to piss him off, so I humored him. You know, so he would trust me. Digging the hole he wanted was no problem.
“We had an old gelding that had to be put down, so I told my stable manager to schedule a backhoe. I told him to have our contractor dig two holes on the far side of the pasture.”
It was the first time Myles had mentioned the backhoe or his manager, or that one of the Cubans was worried about how they were getting out of the U.S. I had not asked for the same reason I hadn’t asked who’d shot the expensive stallion. Questions can give more information than they provide.
“You told him the holes were for graves,” I said.
“Yes,” Myles said, drumming his fingers on the dash. “It’s what we do when animals die: bury them. But the other hole was for the guns-or whatever it was he was bringing. The Cuban said it’s what they did in the Middle East to hide weapons, bury them. Which made sense to me. It’s on TV all the time.”
“One old horse, two graves. Did your manager ask why?”
Myles said, “When I give an order, I don’t wait for questions. Oh
… there’s something else: The Cuban said they would arrive at the stable late Thursday. He didn’t want anyone else on the property. So I told my manager to go into town Thursday night and get drunk. But I didn’t tell him or anyone else I was returning to the Hamptons.”
I said, “You ordered him to get drunk.”
“No, but I knew he would. I spent the previous two nights in Asheville-our family keeps a place there-and landed at the Hamptons jetport around ten p.m., expecting to meet the Spanish-speaking guys at my farm. But the head man called and said something had happened to screw up their plans. He told me I should wait at the landing strip. So I did.”
I had to ask: “On the plane?”
He made a gesture of indifference. “Why not? I own it, along with a couple of pilot associates. No one there but a security cop at the gate.”
I didn’t believe him. I thought it was more likely that Myles had either returned to his farm and met with the Cubans or he’d rendezvoused with Roxanne at some secret meeting place, the Tomlinson estate possibly.
“Then what happened?”
“Around eleven Friday morning, my manager called me on the cell and told me someone had broken into one of the stables and shot our best stallion. I hadn’t heard from the Cubans, so I thought, shit, they did it. But the Cuban called about an hour later and said no way, he had nothing to do with it. The police, he said, were crawling all over the place. Why would they cause trouble, give the police a reason to search, when they were sitting there with a crateful of illegal weapons? He said they’d found a good place to hide and that we would leave as soon as it was safe.”
As the man talked, I was making mental notes, saving my questions until later. “Keep going,” I said.
“I expected the police to take a couple of hours at most. But I found out later that a couple of low-rung bureaucrats had somehow managed to get a signed search warrant, nothing I could do. They brought the thing I mentioned earlier, the ground-penetrating radar. My idiot manager had gone back to town and was drunk again.”