“Yes, Your Honor.” Harry and I say it in unison as he is popping the disk out of the judge’s computer.
“I wonder, could I keep the disk and the transcript over the weekend?” says Quinn. “I’ll make a copy of the transcript for Mr. Tuchio.”
Harry looks at me.
“Sure.” Something tells me there will be a lot of black robes huddled around Quinn’s computer between now and the weekend.
He smiles. “Then I wouldn’t waste any more of your precious time here,” he says.
Harry and I are out the door.
22
They say bad news comes in threes. I believe it. When Tuchio rested his case, we didn’t know it, but messages were waiting for us at the office. The process servers in New York and Washington both missed their last two marks. The only one they’ve managed to serve is Scarborough’s editor, James Aubrey.
According to her office, Trisha Scott left on a sudden vacation that afternoon, off to Europe for the next three weeks, and Bonguard just as quickly disappeared somewhere out on the road with a client. His secretary wasn’t sure when he would be back. She asked our man if he wanted to leave a message. First rule of process serving: When you’re trying to tag somebody with a subpoena, you don’t leave voice mail.
Ten o’clock Wednesday night, Harry and I are trying to catch some Z’s crushed into coach seats like steerage on a packed flight somewhere over the Southwest. I’m learning more than I ever wanted to know about the island of Curaçao. For one thing, if you want to get there, you have to slingshot across the country to Miami before you can even start to head south-almost fourteen hours in transit, and this is one of the quicker flights. I’m beginning to think that this island is a remote dark hole in the earth, off the beaten path, a place where a person might go if he wanted to hide out for a while, perhaps dodge the scent of scandal.
In the office, going out the door, Harry fielded a phone call from Harv Smidt, the crusty newspaper reporter. He has been dogging the trial from behind the scenes since it started. Harv only occasionally graces the courtroom with his presence. He has brought in two younger reporters from the L.A. newsroom of his paper. While they are in court, Smidt is humping up and down the back corridors talking to people in offices-judges, bailiffs, clerks, anybody with a little excess dirt to share. He wanted a quote from Harry about some historic mystery letter that was supposed to be on Scarborough when he was killed.
When Harry swallowed his tongue and went mum, Smidt told him to get on his computer and go online. Harv’s story was already running on the national AP wire, setting forth every little detail we had mentioned in chambers, starting with rumors about Ginnis and including the backgrounders on the J letter from Trisha Scott and Bonguard.
This would explain why they both disappeared. You would, too, if your phone started lighting up with calls from every reporter in the Western Hemisphere. This is what happens when you start sharing videos and transcripts with the curious in the courthouse.
If we’re lucky, we might be twenty-four hours ahead of the press and media mob when they parachute onto the island. People in the marble temple, the Supreme Court and its staff, will no doubt close around Ginnis like the Praetorian Guard to seal off his whereabouts. Unfortunately, we can’t count on the same kind of discretion from “Art and Maggie’s” neighbor out in Chevy Chase. As soon as the media dig her out of her garden, they’ll be flogging jets southward. Harry suggested that we stop off on the way and bag the lady so she could join us on a quick trip to the islands. But the law being what it is, people tend to frown on kidnapping.
Just before eleven the next morning-and we’re only half awake-Harry is squinting in the bright sunshine as I drive and he navigates the rental car from the airport toward Willemstad. It’s the only sizable town on the island and the seat of government for the five islands that make up the Dutch Antilles.
Curaçao was once a Dutch colony and today is a dependency of the Netherlands. The island has its own parliament, prime minister, and council of ministers, along with a governor-general appointed by the queen of the Netherlands.
Harry and I are trying to find our way to the Kura Hulanda, the hotel in town where Herman is staying. Strangely enough, Harry tried his cell phone, Verizon, and it worked. Roaming charges from the States are probably a million dollars a minute, but he hooked up with Herman, who is now headed into town from another direction.
Herman has been combing the island for the better part of two days, trying to hunt down the location of Ginnis and his wife. It may not be a huge island, but apparently it’s big enough that Herman is still searching, with no luck.
The island is arid, desertlike, a lot of rock and dry scrub, with patches of large cactus. Occasional glimpses of the ocean in the distance from the highway reveal azure waters, translucent to the white sand bottom. The sea is tinged green in places by shallow coral reefs. From what I can see, it is the image that might pop into your mind when you hear the words “tropical beach.” Unfortunately, Harry and I aren’t here to swim, though we may drown in Quinn’s courtroom if we don’t find Ginnis.
“Living history,” says Harry.
“What?”
Harry is looking at some literature he grabbed at the airport while I was getting the rental car.
“Says here ‘Living History, Museum Kura Hulanda.’ Apparently it’s by the hotel,” says Harry.
“Does it tell us how to get there?”
“No. But it does say, ‘See how the slave trade was done.’” Harry is reading again.
I glance over. Harry is holding a small printed flyer on card stock, what appears to be a pencil or ink drawing on one side. He flips it over. “‘We will take you back in time to the selling of newly arrived slaves from the west coast of Africa, around the 1700s.’” Harry looks up at me. “Interesting.”
The Hotel Kura Hulanda is situated on the main waterway, the channel that leads from the Caribbean to a generous harbor that spreads out in the center of the island. The harbor includes an oil refinery that was built in the early part of the last century. Today it provides revenue and good jobs for islanders. This, along with tourism and the export of Curaçao liqueur made from the peels of an orange native to the southern Antilles, keeps the island going.
The town of Willemstad itself is split by the channel, maybe three hundred yards wide, enough to admit oceangoing vessels, tankers, and midsize cruise liners.
On the north side, where our hotel is situated, are a number of restaurants, a few offices, taverns, and a small plaza with some shops.
Across the inlet on the other side are buildings three to four stories high, many of them with quaint Dutch façades, painted in bright colors, yellow and aqua, pink and maroon. These stretch for several blocks until they reach an old stone fortress that guards the mouth of the inlet at the sea.
The only way across the channel that divides the town is either to drive on the main highway over a high arch that spans the inlet at the point where it widens toward the refinery or to walk across a broad pontoon bridge. The floating footbridge, situated a few blocks to the west of our hotel, swings open for ships to pass and then closes again like a gate to connect with the other side.
The bridge is hinged on our side. At the far end, on the bridge at the other side, is a small hut. Every once in a while, you can see the belching exhaust from the roof of the hut and hear the diesel engine as the operator engages the prop that drives the gatelike bridge to open and close.
The hotel, the Hulanda, is actually a series of low-lying buildings situated around a large, meandering courtyard set into the hillside on the north edge of the inlet. It is separated from the waterway by a street with paved sidewalks on each side. A few shops and a restaurant-the Gouverneur de Rouville, a three-story red and white Dutch Colonial building with louver-shuttered windows and a veranda overlooking the water-complete the complex.