As I look off to the left past the stone, I see a small cove, no sand beach but a shelf against the cliff, covered by broken pieces of gray coral. There are maybe eight or ten plastic chaise lounges set out on top of the coral, a few with towels on them. Two at this end, closest to me, are occupied by a couple readying their masks and fins for a snorkel adventure. Farther back in the cove, perhaps forty yards away, is a solitary figure, a guy sitting sideways on the lounge, facing me. He is talking on a cell phone.
I’ve never seen a picture of Aranda, but the man’s appearance fits the bill. He looks to be in his early thirties, short-cropped dark hair, well built, broad shoulders and narrow waist. With him seated, I can’t tell how tall he is, but he is lean and appears very fit.
I keep checking my watch every few minutes, hoping that Herman will get here.
If the man sitting on the chaise lounge is Aranda, I know that he is not going to talk on the phone for long, not with roaming charges just off the coast of Venezuela. And when he hangs up, he’s going to either hit the water or head back to wherever it is he came from. I could approach him and try to talk to him, but I’m afraid he would simply get up and run, in which case I would have to track him in the car on winding dirt roads through clouds of dust. And you could be sure that he would not go anywhere near Ginnis until he was certain he’d lost me.
Once Herman gets here, we can take our chances. Herman can block him with his girth while I talk. Herman always packs a folding knife. If we have to, he can punch one of the tires on Aranda’s car and we can trap him in the lot until we talk his ear off. Give him a ride and let him show us where Ginnis is.
I check my watch again. Herman should be here any second. Then I see it, a cloud of dust, a fast-moving vehicle coming this way from the land side of the hill with the towered fortress. Herman to the rescue. When the large, dark SUV comes out of a line of brush and turns this way, it’s moving so fast that the rear end fishtails on the sand and loose gravel.
As soon as they stop and two of them get out, one of them with a good-size camera, I know I’m in trouble. Part of the media mob has found its way to Jan Thiel, and they’re ahead of Herman.
Now there’s no time to waste. I head directly toward the man on the phone, long strides, my shoes digging into the broken pieces of coral. As I walk right up to him his head is down, he’s smiling, talking on the phone. When he sees my feet stop a yard or so in front of him, he finally looks up.
“Are you Alberto Aranda?”
The expression in his eyes is one I have seen before, whenever I am forced to surrender a client to be taken into custody by police in my office.
“Sweetie, I gotta go. I’ll call you later.” He snaps the clamshell phone closed. “Who are you?”
“My name is Paul Madriani. I’m a lawyer from San Diego—”
Before I can even finish the sentence, he slips rubber thongs on his feet, grabs his snorkel gear, gets off the chaise lounge, and brushes right past me.
“You better not go that way. The media is waiting for you with cameras in the parking lot.”
This stops him like a bullet.
He turns and looks at me. “What do you want?”
“I want to know where Arthur Ginnis is.”
At this moment his expression is a mask of anxiety. He thinks for a second, then looks toward the parking lot again. “Are you with them?”
“No. I just want to talk to you. All I want to know is where Justice Ginnis is.”
“Get me out of here,” he says, “and I’ll take you to him.”
A towel over his head for shade, carrying his gear, and me walking beside him, we draw little or no attention. We head back through the parking lot. By now the cameras have swelled to two crews, who are gathering their equipment. One of the reporters is scanning the forest of chaise lounges and oiled bodies on the beach at the other side of the parking area. Their vehicles, two full-size SUVs, motors still running with drivers behind the wheels, are parked not in spaces but behind other cars, blocking them. One of these is mine.
I’m a step or so ahead of Aranda, wondering how we’re going to do this, finesse our way past them. I’m hoping that they don’t have a picture of him, when suddenly I realize he is no longer behind me.
By the time I turn and look, Aranda is ten feet away. He has the door open, and before I can take two steps, he slides into the car, a compact rental, slams the door, and locks it. As I reach the car and grab the handle on the outside, he already has the engine started and he’s rolling, shooting gravel at me from under the rear wheels as he pulls out. I have to throw my body onto the hood of the vehicle behind me to keep from being crushed as he does the turn, pulling out.
I’m up on the hood of the vehicle on my back watching as he jams the car into first and guns it straight ahead through the parking lot. Of course, the screeching tires and the sound of flying gravel draw the attention of the cameras like bees to honey.
By the time he tears past them and I’m back on my feet running toward my car, the obstacles blocking my vehicle are gone. The two camera cars with lenses protruding from the rear passenger windows pull U-turns, and within seconds they’re in hot pursuit.
As I get in and start the car, I’m guessing that I’m already a quarter of a mile behind Aranda. Turning to exit the parking lot, I see their dust ahead of me as Aranda goes straight, taking the road I came in on. One of the camera vehicles follows him. The other cuts off to the left on another road. I don’t follow it. I stay with Aranda.
A few hundred feet up, there is a bend in the road, and I see a large cloud of dust. As I enter it, I’m forced to slow down. When the dust begins to settle, I see the car with the cameras off in a ditch on the right and what appears to be a taxi with its nose stuck into the side of the hill on my left. I know it’s a taxi because Herman is standing just next to it talking with both hands, Italian style, to guys crawling out of the SUV.
I slow down and get a mouthful of dust as I open the window and wave him toward me. The instant he sees me, Herman stops talking and sprints to the passenger side of my car and gets in. Before his feet even hit the floorboards, we’re moving again.
“It’s Aranda up in front of us,” I tell him.
“Damn near killed us,” says Herman. “I thought we were clear till the other car nailed us. Couldn’t even see ’em in the dust.”
“I had him in the parking lot. He got away. The press showed up.”
“As soon as I saw the cameras in the car, I figured,” he says.
We are racing, bouncing along in ruts on the unpaved road. Herman hits his head on the roof of the car and finally gets himself strapped in.
Heading down the grade on the other side of the hill, I can see Aranda’s car moving at speed now, on pavement. The other SUV is behind him, less than fifty yards back, with a camera all the way out the window, trying to get film of the chase. There must be another way around the hill on the other side. Their vehicle has now closed the distance. The clerk in his small rental car is not going to be able to stay ahead of them for long, not on pavement.
Herman and I struggle to catch up. When we reach the pavement, I put the pedal all the way to the floor. Down on the flatlands, we can no longer see them. The two cars have disappeared. For a while, more than a mile, there are no intersecting roads, so I race at full speed, taking some dogleg turns and fishtailing.
As I negotiate one of these, I see the SUV. It’s turned around, facing the other direction on the wrong side of the road. Its rear end is up against a metal light standard, with a good wrinkle in the bumper and the rear hatchback. All four of the occupants are out, stretching their legs and checking their body parts to see if they’re still working.
Up ahead I can see a traffic light where the road dumps into the main highway. The light is red in our direction. There’s no sign of Aranda’s small car. He has made it to the main highway and merged with traffic. With dozens of roads to turn off onto and probably more than a mile ahead of us, there�
�s no way we’re going to catch him now.
Herman and I cruise the back roads along the coast on this end of the island for the balance of the afternoon and into the early evening, looking for any sign of Aranda or the small car he was driving. Herman calls Harry and tells him what has happened.
Just before dark we arrive back at the hotel and end up out back on the veranda of the Gouverneur de Rouville.
By now Ginnis will know that the world has found him. He and his entourage will be making plans for a quick exit off the island.
Harry suggests that we stake out the airport. It’s a thought, but the chances are slim. You can be sure that a member of the Supreme Court—and there are only nine of them in the world—can call in one of the sleek white government passenger jets anytime he needs it, so that even if he leaves from the main airport, he won’t be going through the terminal. They would take him out through one of the private hangars, guarded and behind locked security gates. We wouldn’t even be able to get within two hundred yards of him.
We’ve lost him, and we know it.
The three of us sit there having drinks. We order dinner, and Harry and I begin discussing plans for an early return to San Diego. Herman makes a call to his process server in Washington and warns him that Ginnis may be on his way home shortly, so to watch his house and to try to serve him with a subpoena there.
We are talking over our meals. I’m seated with my back to the bar, looking out over the narrow inlet, the bright lights and neon from the buildings on the other side dancing off the water as Harry talks.
“We use the witnesses we have, draw out their testimony, and stall for time,” says Harry. “Sooner or later Ginnis has to pop up. The other members of the Court will be putting fire to his feet to make him show up at work once they realize he’s not in recovery mode, he’s hiding.”
As Harry is talking, I’m so exhausted that my mind dances with the neon across the way. People walking, a small boutique hotel, next to it a bar all lit up. Jazz music floating across the water. People coming and going, tourists arriving, a few more leaving.
“We have to get out of here. We have to get home.” It doesn’t click in my mind until the figure hauling luggage is joined by the other two. Then I see the large, dark Town Car pull up in front of the steps under the bright orange neon.
“What’s wrong?” Harry is looking at me. His back is to the water. He turns around.
“It’s Ginnis….” I’m out of my chair before the words are out of my mouth. “Do you have the subpoena?”
Herman has it in his pocket. He’s still looking, but he doesn’t quite see what I’m looking at.
“There, under the hotel sign on the stairs. Aranda with the luggage, the man with the cane,” I say.
Then they see him. In a shot, Herman is through the restaurant and out the door. Harry and I empty our wallets onto the table. We don’t even have a bill.
We are fifty yards behind Herman on the sidewalk running along the waterway toward the floating bridge. A few seconds later, Herman is on it, clambering across. You can hear his heavy footsteps. None of us are up for this. Harry is falling behind. “Go on,” he says. “Don’t wait for me.”
As I look across the water, the tall, willowy figure is still at the top of the stairs. When you are tired, your mind plays funny tricks, but I swear that the other person hauling the luggage down to the car is Aranda.
Ginnis is wearing white slacks, a dark sport coat, and a panama hat drawn low over his face. In the distance I can see the head turning as he checks out the street in both directions, no doubt making sure that the media crews chasing him are not in sight. He isn’t even leaning on the cane. When he comes down the stairs, he has only the arm of the stout woman standing next to him for support. This would have to be Margaret.
Herman is nearly across, thirty yards from the quay on the other side, when the diesel engine starts. The bridge begins to rattle, and within seconds it swings free from the concrete dock and begins the long arc back across the water to where we started. Herman stops, puts his hands on his knees to catch his breath. Then he runs to the hut and the operator inside and pleads with him to close the bridge just for a second, long enough for him to jump onto the sidewalk on the other side.
“No, mon, there’s a freighter coming.”
We stand there and watch in total frustration as the arc of the bridge brings us within fifty yards of the dark Town Car, before the pontoons slide us away and across the water. By this time Ginnis and his wife are already in the backseat.
I cannot tell if he sees me or, if he does, whether he recognizes me, but when he looks this way, over the roof of the car, just before he slides behind the wheel and they pull away, there is no question that the driver is Alberto Aranda.
TWENTY-THREE
Monday morning, and Harry and I are back in the office, still jet-lagged from the long flight home.
Saturday night after watching the Town Car disappear around the corner as we watched helplessly from the moving bridge, Harry, Herman, and I raced to the airport in Curaçao in hopes that maybe we would see the sleek, dark vehicle somewhere near the terminal. But if it was there, it was already secluded behind locked gates in a secure area. There was no sign of the car or any of its occupants. The three of us scoured the terminal, which isn’t that big.
Harry thinks Ginnis probably gave up the rental house the moment he discovered that the world was looking for him. They would have moved to the hotel in town for a day or two, just after Herman hit the island. They could have stayed in rooms rented probably in another name, killing time until they could coordinate their move off the island out of the sight of the press.
“God knows where they went,” says Harry, “because they didn’t go home.” Harry knows this because our processor server, who has been camped in his car outside Ginnis’s house in Chevy Chase, hasn’t seen hide nor hair of the justice or his wife.
And there’s more bad news.
Wednesday evening, about the time Harry and I were taking off for Curaçao, Judge Quinn, on his own motion, decided to sequester the jury. After winning points with jurors, giving them what looked like a long weekend off, the judge was suddenly overwhelmed by second thoughts thanks to the budding news reports that Harv Smidt had filed on the AP wire.
Smidt no doubt had called the judge for a comment. The wire-service story about Scarborough’s having an important and perhaps historic letter in his possession when he was murdered, and mentioning in the same paragraph the name Arthur Ginnis, apparently sent shivers up Quinn’s spine. The fact that this story was obviously inspired by Quinn’s sharing clips from the restaurant video with some of his buds in black didn’t diminish the judge’s fear level.
How do you complain to a judge about his own violation of his own gag order?
Understandably, Quinn wanted to corral the jury before they piled up at the newsstands to buy Harv’s story. The judge dispatched half the county sheriff’s office and part of the highway patrol to round up all the jurors and have them get their toothbrushes and pajamas. He now has them all incarcerated in a hotel downtown, where they get to read censored newspapers with rectangles cut out of them and play around-the-clock Parcheesi with seven armed bailiffs.
Sequester a jury and the rule of probability is they will take it out on one person—the defendant.
Harry is seated across the table from me in my office as I paw through a stack of papers and envelopes in the middle of my desk, mail that showed up Thursday and Friday when we were gone.
I flip Harry a couple of catalogs—he likes to shop but never buys—and scan through the correspondence, which is already opened by my secretary, with the envelopes stapled to the backs of the letters in case we ever need proof of a postal date on anything.
I work my way to the bottom of the stack, and there is a large manila envelope with my name and office address printed neatly on a label. Just below this, in bold caps across the bottom of the label, are the words PERSONAL & CONFIDEN
TIAL, the reason the secretary didn’t open it. There is no return address. No stamp or postage-meter tape.
Herman has just arrived in the outer office. I can hear him chatting with Jennifer, the paralegal. The rest of the staff is off. It’s a holiday. All the government offices, including the courts, are closed. Jennifer should be home as well, but by now she is attached to Arnsberg’s case in the way a magnet attaches to metal.
“Where did this come from?” I look at Harry, who is still paging through one of the catalogs.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jennifer, you out there?” says Harry. “Come in here for a second.”
A second later she slips her head around the corner of the door.
“Any idea where this came from?” I hold up the envelope.
She looks at it, then comes in and takes a closer look.
“How you guys feeling?” Herman comes in and leans up against the book cabinet inside my office.
“I could use a few more hours’ sleep, but other than that, a signed declaration showing proof of service for a subpoena on Arthur Ginnis and everything is chipper,” says Harry.
“Oh, that,” says Jennifer. “It was under the door when I got to work Thursday morning.”
Whatever is inside, I’m guessing a business envelope containing more than one page, based on the heft and the fact that it’s sliding around, too small for the larger manila outer envelope.
I can feel it in my bones. Tuchio is laying something on us at the last minute. I’ve been expecting it for days, the midnight motion. I talk with Harry as I slit the top of the manila envelope with my letter opener. I peer inside for the business envelope, looking for the district attorney’s printed address in the corner.
My fingers are halfway into the manila opening when I see what’s inside. Instantly I stop what I’m doing and withdraw my hand.
Harry reads my face and looks at the envelope as if maybe there’s a snake inside. “What’s the matter?”
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