by Tim Green
"Congratulations, counselor," Chris said to her, clearing his throat to hide the embarrassment at his own show of emotion.
"Not bad for a sports agent, huh?" Madison replied with a warm smile.
"No, not bad at all."
Before the summer sun went down that day, Madison was out on her back deck beside the pool.
"Watch this, Mom!" Jo-Jo hollered before doing an awkward back flip off the board.
"I wish he wouldn't," Madison murmured to Cody.
"He's ten," Cody reminded her.
"I know," she acknowledged.
"Good one, Jo-Jo!" she cheered when her son came up for air. "Now listen, sweetheart, I want you to go in and get some clothes on. Well be eating in about fifteen minutes."
"Okay, Mom," he said.
They watched Jo-Jo towel himself dry and then trot off to change. Cody got up and turned the hot dogs that had begun to sputter on the grill behind them. He sat back down in his lounge chair beside Madison, took a long drink from his sweaty beer bottle, and looked out over the golf course at the setting sun.
"Do you think they'll ever find him?" he asked abruptly.
"Leeland, you mean?" Madison said, also looking off into the same distance from behind her sunglasses.
"Yeah."
Madison shook her head sadly and took a sip from her drink. "I don't know, probably not," she said. "He seems to have the capacity to appear and disappear at will. They probably wont get him . .
"So Wilburn and Pallidan and Vivian Chase go free then, don't they?" Cody said.
Madison nodded her head. "I don't think Vivian actually had her husband killed. I don't think she was sad to see him dead, but I don't think she had a hand in it either.
"As far as Wilburn and Pallidan and Pdvet himself," she continued, "the police and the FBI haven't been able to build a strong enough case against them to do anything."
Cody shook his head. "It's unbelievable ... to get away with all that."
"The guy who really made out is Aaron Crawford," Madison reminded him. "He's made a fortune on the team's move, from what I hear. I guess he owns pretty much everything for about three miles around the stadium site. People are saying that his development plan is going to be a model for the interaction between sports and commerce for the next century."
"It's amazing," Cody pondered. "As scandalous as the whole thing was, Crawford still got exactly what he wanted."
"I think people these days care a lot more about what you do than how you do it," Madison said. "Memphis has its team. Crawford has his billions."
"That's America," Cody pronounced, finishing off his beer.
"Still," she said, "I like to think that sooner or later, everyone gets what they deserve."
"Maybe they do, Madison," Cody said. "Maybe they do."
It was well into the Caribbean night, and the three men who were enjoying the fruits of their labor were gathered around a table playing cards. The air was thick with the smoke of hand-rolled Cuban cigars. A steward appeared periodically with fresh ashtrays and to pour an unblended M. Ragnaud Le Paradis Cognac. The one-hundred-sixty-foot yacht owned by Aaron Crawford was anchored off the coast of Tobago. The three men were taking a holiday.
No one was particularly disappointed at the news of Luther Zorn's acquittal earlier that day. Luther had simply played his part in their drama. And now, no one, not even Wilburn, begrudged Luther his freedom. He had paid a dear price already for his intrusion into their plans. He would never again play the game that made him who he was. He would never even walk.
These men were celebrating because their patron, the great Aaron Crawford himself, had graced their presence for the past three days and had unfolded yet another plan. He had rewarded them liberally for their handling of the Marauders, and they were now rich men. A helicopter had lifted their leader from the deck of the ship that very afternoon. Crawford had left them to enjoy his hospitality and their tremendous success with a smile and a congenial wave.
The negative publicity and the wild speculation of racketeering and murder meant nothing to Crawford. Only results mattered, and they spoke for themselves. The team had been moved. No concrete connection had been made between Leeland Zorn and the Crawford empire, let alone any of the three men personally. That would happen only if Leeland were ever to turn up in the hands of the law, something they all felt confident wasn't going to happen. Leeland Zorn, they knew, was a man who had the capacity to live undetected somewhere for the rest of his life.
At that moment Leeland was, indeed, undetected. He was fastening a brick of C-4 to the hull of the yacht, which was anchored in seventy feet of water about two miles from shore.
Leeland set the timer and gave himself enough time to swim the quarter mile back to his skiff. He removed his air tank and lifted it into the boat. Then he slid over the side and sat back to wait. Overhead, the black sky was aflame with stars. A soft breeze dried Leelands face, and he actually felt a moment of peace. He regretted the fact that Aaron Crawford had flown off that afternoon. It would have been nice to be able to include him in the grand finale of the nights festivities.
Suddenly an orange ball of flame lit the waters surface. An instant later the boom of the explosion crashed around Leelands ears. He smiled to himself and started the little outboard motor. The ship went down faster than he thought it would, and soon the flames that leapt from the burning hull were extinguished. Leeland wondered if they had had time to get off He hoped so. He would hate to have it end for them so quickly.
Of the three, only Rivet seemed to have gone down with the ship. Leeland puttered about in the wreckage, mercifully putting bullets into the heads of four crew members, who although burned to a man, had survived by clinging to the flotsam. With Wilburn and Pallidan, Leeland used his knife and took his time, bathing in the red-hued violence of the act. He wanted them to know exactly who was killing them and why.
By the time Leeland finished, the wind had picked up. As the little skiff mounted wave after wave on the way back to shore, two heads bumped ghoulishly about on the floor like forgotten coconuts. They would be the last. It would end now. Everything wasn't exactly right, but things were as good as he could make them. Leeland steered his boat around to the far side of the island and disappeared into the darkness.