“Bull shark?” Rivers said, leaning for the gunwale as if to confirm. “A big one?”
“Big enough.”
“Well, I never had that happen before. Sometimes they come in to feed on a whale, but…”
“You pull this kind of shit all the time?”
“I told you, people like it. They love it.”
“Take us back,” Graham said, then he stalked over to Casey and put a towel around her shoulders.
She didn’t stop shivering until they hit the beach.
“Christ,” Graham said as they sat down at the terrace table overlooking the ocean. “I’m sorry.”
“How can he do something that crazy and get away with it?” Casey asked.
Major Appleton said, “Who you gonna call?”
“You’re with the island police,” she said.
“People on a vacation?” the major said. “They don’t want trouble. Like he said, most of them probably do like it, seeing the sharks.”
“But not knowing that’s what he’s going to do?”
“The thrill, I guess,” the major said.
“My God,” Casey said, “the DNA.”
The major raised his eyebrows and reached beneath the table, digging into his dive bag. When his hands reappeared, they held a Ziploc bag containing an empty can of Bud Light and a slimy pool of brown juice.
“Got it when I went to break up the fight,” the major said. “A world of DNA.”
“There wasn’t a fight,” Graham said.
“Might have been,” the major said, grinning. “Wouldn’t be your first, eh?”
Graham clapped the major on the back, grinning as well. “Not my last, either.”
31
JAKE COULDN’T keep going this way. He called a doctor friend down on Long Island and had him phone in some codeine to a local Rite Aid. He popped two, desperate for relief, and set off for Auburn. Jake listened to his messages. He tried Casey but got only voice mail before Don Wall rang in on the other line.
“You know who this Napoli guy is?” Don asked.
“Let me guess,” Jake said, the pain growing dim, his mind blurring slightly as he passed out of the city limits, “the attorney for the city of Buffalo?”
“Why are you fucking around with me?” Don said. “Do you think I have time for this shit? I already put out feelers for a Buffalo mob guy.”
“I just found out the hard way,” Jake said, concentrating hard on his mouth to keep his words from slurring from the codeine. “White flag. I’m going home.”
“Where you belong.”
“Thanks, Don,” Jake said. “I’m sorry. I’ll send you some of the new network lapel pins.”
“They got new ones?”
“For the VIPs. I got you covered.”
He rode for a while longer, gently probing the stitches in the back of his head and feeling much better before he sighed heavily and dialed up Dora for a different kind of medicine.
Jake tucked a brand-new cell phone under his chin, riding east on the Thruway now, toward his hotel room in Auburn. He got Dora and told her what had happened and how he felt stupid.
“Don’t feel stupid,” Dora said, “that’s what makes you good. You get wild ideas and you follow through on them. Sometimes they pan out, but that’s not why I left you a message to call me. Listen to this.”
Dora read him a story in the Auburn Citizen quoting anonymous sources close to Dwayne Hubbard’s Freedom Project legal team suggesting a cover-up in the twenty-year-old murder case that involved the then district attorney’s son.
“Casey didn’t say a goddamn thing about it,” Jake said. “I just tried calling her. No wonder she didn’t pick up my call. They actually leaked it to someone else?”
“Maybe Graham is the source,” Dora said. “And if he wasn’t, he’s the one paying her tab. Why would she give the scoop to the guy who’s out looking to smear him?”
“Not smear, just shine some light,” Jake said. “I know Graham is hiding dirty stuff.”
“Whatever he’s got going with an old mill and some factory jobs, it’s not as dirty as a judge who turned the system on an innocent man when she was the DA,” Dora said. “Did you know she was the governor’s choice to fill the vacancy they’ve got on the New York State Court of Appeals?”
“Not if this thing has any traction.”
“Exactly,” Dora said. “This is a story worth getting in trouble for. So get to work and find your girl and get us the inside scoop.”
“My girl isn’t returning my calls,” Jake said.
“If you can’t get a girl on the phone, it only tells me one thing,” Dora said.
“That she doesn’t like me?”
“That you’re not trying.”
“I am as of now.”
“Good, got a backup plan?”
“Not really,” Jake said. “But there’s a kid lawyer whose family is plugged in and the head of the Auburn Hospital who’re both fans, so if I can’t get her, I’ll start with them.”
“I’ll line up a crew in case. And Jake?”
“Yeah?” he asked, ready for one of her wisecracks.
“Don’t half-ass this one. This isn’t a puff piece.”
32
JAKE CHANGED into khaki shorts and a dark green polo shirt. It was, after all, a backyard barbeque. He swallowed two more codeine pills, then followed the directions Marty had given him, turning off Route 20 and heading south toward Owasco Lake. A mile before it, he turned off and wound his way through a few backstreets before finding a rugged drive that dipped down into some trees. Late model cars and trucks lined the shoulder, half in the ditch. Jake had to back into a driveway and swing around, going almost all the way back to the paved street before he pulled the Cadillac over to the side and got out. He followed a young couple where the wife wore a pale yellow sundress and carried some kind of casserole wrapped in aluminum foil. Her boyfriend or husband groped her rump through the dress until he realized Jake was following.
The couple turned down a dirt drive marked by a wooden sign, hand-painted with the name Zarnazzi. Jake followed, his shoes clapping the hard-packed mud in one of the tire tracks and leading him toward the twang of a live bluegrass band. The single story red summer cottage lay in the midst of dozens of picnic tables filled with revelers that stretched to the grassy bank of the lake inlet. Two Jet Skis buzzed by on their way to the lake, their drivers hooting and waving to friends in the crowd. A giant, half-round black grill hitched to the back of a heavy-duty pickup truck had been pulled onto the back lawn and poured smoke into the treetops from a stovepipe smokestack. Whole chickens in blackened suits disrupted the snarling flames while a fat man in a white chef’s hat basted them with a four-inch paintbrush.
The couple in front of Jake deposited their offering among the others on a checkered cloth that stretched across three picnic tables. Diners with paper plates worked the other side of the table, picking through the dishes before receiving their own char-grilled chicken from the fat man. Men crowded the beer keg’s icy tub while kids ran through the hubbub trailing balloons. Jake breathed deep the smell of food and cold beer and his mouth watered.
“Jake!”
Jake turned and shook Marty’s hand. The young lawyer was wearing pleated golf shorts and a Greg Norman straw hat. His collared shirt sported a litany of ketchup stains. He didn’t appear to notice, though, as he introduced Jake to a bucktoothed girl with dark hair and a deep tan. Jake thought she had the judge’s eyes and he couldn’t help but notice the ample curve of her breasts in the tight lime green tank top whose color matched her hair band.
“Let’s get something to eat,” Marty said, raising his voice above the band. “We’ll sit with you.”
Jake followed them through the line, loading his plate and sitting across from Marty and his fiancée before accepting a cup of beer Marty poured from a half-empty pitcher. The beer would go good with the codeine, make it a real party. They raised their plastic cups.