Lifeguard

by James Patterson

  I shook my head. “I meant for believing in me. Nobody has in a long while.”

  Chapter 59

  THE TALL MAN was hunched down in the front seat of the tan Ford, resting the Nikon on his lap, about fifty feet from Ellie Shurtleff’s house. He was getting too old for this. And these cars were too cramped. He was thinking about the old days, when you could really stretch out your legs in a Cougar or a Grand Am.

  He saw someone leaving Ellie Shurtleff’s house from the back. Okay, he thought, angling the Nikon, time to shift into gear.

  Holy Shit! He jumped up, did a double take. That was Ned Kelly walking into the street.

  It was definitely Kelly. He clicked off a few frantic shots. Click, click, click. He felt as if he were having a heart attack.

  All he was supposed to do was keep a tab on sweet little Ellie. He never expected anything this good. He followed Kelly down the street and zoomed in with the lens.

  Click, click.

  Of course, he knew the schmuck was innocent. Obviously the FBI gal felt that way, too. Or she was in cahoots with him.

  He started thinking about what he should do. He could run up and arrest Kelly. Build a whole career on this. Get his face on the front page of USA Today. Course, then he’d have to explain what he was doing keeping tabs on Ellie.

  He zoomed in and took a last shot of Ned Kelly climbing into some old clunker. Close-up of the North Carolina plates. Another shot on Kelly’s face. Guy didn’t look too bad for the wear and tear.

  Oh, you got balls, honey, the tall man had to admit. The whole world was out looking for him, and look where he was—at your house.

  The tall man put down the camera and, flicking a matchbook deftly through the fingers of his right hand, watched Kelly drive away.

  Diminutive, he thought, nodding to himself, but ballsy.

  Chapter 60

  BY THE TIME I got back to Champ’s cycle shop it was close to midnight. To my surprise, I spotted a light on inside. Then I saw Champ’s Ducati parked by the Dumpster.

  “Late night?” I heard him say as I slipped in through the door connected to the garage bay. Champ was sitting down with his feet up on the counter, his chair angled back, and the omnipresent bottle of beer. The TV was on. Jay Leno interviewing Nicole Kidman.

  “National Pride Night?” I said, taking a seat in a chair next to him.

  “She’s an Aussie, mate. I’m Kiwi,” Geoff replied, a little peeved. He offered me a beer. “I don’t assume you know last night’s curling results just ’cause you were born up near Canada, do I?”

  “Guilty,” I said, and clinked my bottle to his. I leaned back next to him with my feet up, too.

  “So, how was the party, mate? Any good women?”

  “One,” I said.

  “These tall bitches . . .” Geoff ignored me, nodding toward Nicole on the TV screen. “Always found them a little difficult to handle myself. Legs get in the way. I know this one gal —”

  “Champ,” I interrupted, “do you want to hear about what happened tonight?”

  “Actually,” he said, lowering his chair and facing me, “if you must know, I want to tell you what a well-formed decision you made when you signed me up. This gal I was mentioning is a real night owl. She’s a clerk twice a week. At the Brazilian Court.”

  I brought down my feet and stared. “Okay.”

  “First, you may have to accept, mate, that that pretty Aussie girlfriend of yours wasn’t all she led you to believe.”

  “I think I’m past that,” I said.

  He pivoted and faced me, forearms on knees. “Seems that she had some frequent visitors to her room there. Some prominent ones. How does the name Stratton sound to you, Neddie-boy?”

  “Like old news,” I said with a sigh of disappointment. “Dennis Stratton. He was seeing Tess. I’m already there.”

  “You’re barely in the neighborhood.” Geoff shook his head with a smile. “I’m not talking the old man, mate. I’m talking Liz Stratton. Dennis’s wife.”

  He saw my shock and rocked back, taking a self-satisfied swig of his beer. “Whadya think, I got a knack for this sort of work, or what, Neddie-boy?”

  Chapter 61

  A LOT OF THINGS had shocked me since I left Tess’s suite at the Brazilian Court and thought my life was about to take off. But what could Stratton’s wife have to do with Tess?

  Ellie and I had settled on a code if I needed to contact her at the office. I’d use the name Steve, as in McQueen. And I did, first thing the following morning. I told her what Champ had told me.

  “I think we have to talk to Liz Stratton, Ellie.”

  “First,” she said, “I think we have to find out who Liz Stratton really is.”

  I had a trump card I’d been holding back, and I was thinking now might be the time to use it. “I may have a way.”

  “No, you don’t do anything,” Ellie shot back. “You stay put. I’ll get you when I know something. You comprende, Steve?”

  So I played it like a good little fugitive. I spent the day holed up in the small room above Geoff’s garage, picking through some microwave lasagna and his John D. MacDonald crime novels, watching the news on TV. The next day, too. Ellie didn’t return my calls. I felt like Anne Frank hiding from the Germans. Except it wasn’t just the Germans who were after me, it was the whole world. And it wasn’t some doctor’s family who was protecting me, or Brahms I was hearing through the walls, but some loony cycle racer blaring U2, revving up his Ducati.

  Late that next afternoon, Geoff banged on the floor. “Team meeting,” he yelled. “Coming up the stairs. You decent, mate?”

  I figured “decent” meant my T-shirt and boxers, and “team meeting” was “beer time, four P.M.” I swung open the door.

  To my surprise, there was Ellie, and Geoff hanging back with a grin.

  “I want to thank you, mate, for your keen sense of discretion in keeping it just between us, and the fucking FBI, that you are here.”

  “Guess you two have met,” I said, kicking open the door. I scrambled around for a second, putting my legs into a pair of jeans.

  Ellie peeked around the disgusting storage room—boxes of spare parts; cycle catalogs strewn all over the floor; the unmade cot I’d slept in—trying to find a place to sit. “Nice digs . . .”

  “Thanks,” Geoff said, kicking a box of twisted rims out of the way. “Used it many times myself. And I have to admit,” Champ said, nodding, approvingly at me, “when you said FBI agent, Neddie, I wasn’t exactly thinking Jodie Foster.”

  She did look cute in a black suit and pink top, but not very cheery. “What’d you find out about Liz?”

  “Not much.” She took a beer and tipped it obligingly toward Geoff. “The woman’s untouchable. Her maiden name’s O’Callahan. An old Florida family. Lawyers and judges, mostly. About as private and influential as you can get. She went to Vanderbilt, worked for a while at her daddy’s law firm. She married Stratton about eighteen years ago. I’m told she was his access into the circles that financed many of his business deals.”

  “We have to talk to her, Ellie.”

  “I tried,” Ellie sighed. “I wanted to question her without drawing the attention of my office. But I hit a wall with the family lawyer. Only with Stratton present, and even then only with a presubmitted list of questions.”

  “Christ, the tart’s tighter than a nun in a condom factory,” Geoff said, then gulped a swig of his beer.

  “Nice,” Ellie scrunched up her nose. “Stratton keeps her totally under wraps. She doesn’t even go out for lunch without guards. I don’t have enough to bring her in for questioning.”

  “Jesus, Ellie, you’re the FBI. . . .”

  “What do you want me to do, run this by my boss? What we need is someone in her circle. Someone who can get to her. Make her talk. And I don’t have any contacts there.”

  As I said, I had a trump card. And it wasn’t worth holding any longer. I rolled the beer bottle around in my hands. “I may have a
way.”

  Chapter 62

  SOMEONE SAYS HE’S your friend, but you never really know. Life has taught me that there are always barriers that get in the way. Like the rich siding with the rich, whatever side they’re on. What is it I hear the English say? There are no lifelong friends, or lifelong enemies. Only lifelong interests. And I guess you never know what those interests are until you try.

  So the next morning I made the call. I might as well have been a sixteen-year-old asking a girl out for the first time. I was never so nervous dialing a number in my life.

  “It’s me, Neddie.” My mouth went dry as soon as I heard him answer.

  I waited. No reply. I started worrying I had made a mistake. I could be getting us all in an awful lot of trouble.

  “You sure dropped the hose in the deep end—for a pool boy,” Sollie Roth finally sighed.

  I didn’t laugh. He didn’t mean for me to. That was Sollie’s way of being dead-on serious. “You said something, Sollie, as I drove away. You said a man doesn’t run off in the middle of the night. That no problem was too big to solve. Maybe I should’ve listened to you. I know how things look now. What I need to know is, do you still mean that, Sollie?”

  “I never turned you in, son, if that’s what you’re looking for. I said I was sleeping when you took off.”

  “I know that,” I said, feeling a little ashamed. “Thanks.”

  “No thanks needed,” he said matter-of-factly. “I know people, kid. And I know you didn’t do those crimes.”

  For a second I hung my head away from the phone. I swallowed thickly. “I didn’t, Sollie. I swear to God. But I need some help to prove it. Can I trust you, Sollie?”

  “You can trust this, Ned,” the old man said. “I’ve been where you are now, and I learned that the only thing that’s gonna keep you from spending the rest of your life in prison comes down to the quality of your friends. You have those kinds of friends, Neddie-boy?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. My lips were dry. “What kind are you, Sollie?”

  I heard him chuckle. “In matters like this,” Sol Roth said, then paused. “The highest, kid. The highest.”

  Chapter 63

  “SO WHO ARE WE meeting here?” Geoff pulled the bike into the parking lot across the street from St. Edward’s Church and cut the ignition.

  Green’s was a luncheonette/pharmacy situated on North County, a sleepy throwback to a bygone time. When JFK was president and Palm Beach held the Winter White House, Kennedy and Washington staffers would party all night, attend early mass at St. Ed’s, then spill into Green’s for a jolt of joe and some waitress sass while still in their tuxes.

  The man we were meeting was sitting in his corner booth, under the window, wearing a powder blue V-necked sweater and golf shirt, a Kangol hat next to him, his thinning white hair plastered tight against his scalp. He had the Wall Street Journal open and wore a pair of reading glasses. He looked more like some retired accountant checking his stocks than the man who was going to save my life.

  “So, you got some kind of ringer, mate?” Champ elbowed me, sweeping the room for whom we were going to meet. “That’s why you’re holed up with me. Someone really on the inside.”

  “I told you, Champ, trust me.”

  I shuffled over to the table. The man seated there took a sip of coffee and folded the Journal into an even square.

  “So you never turned me in,” I said with a grateful smile.

  “Why would I want to do that?” He looked up. “You still owe me two hundred dollars from gin.”

  I grinned broadly. He did, too. I put out my hand.

  “It’s good to see you, son,” Sol said, shaking my hand and cocking his head a bit at how I’d changed. “Seems you went to an awful lot of trouble just to cut your hair.”

  “Time for a change,” I said.

  “You want to sit down?” He moved his hat and looked at Geoff. “This is the fellow you were speaking about?” He squinted a bit uncomfortably at Champ’s striking orange hair.

  “Either of you mind cutting me in?” Champ stared blankly, wondering what the hell was going on.

  I grinned. “The pit just got a little more crowded, Champ. Say hello to Sollie Roth.”

  Chapter 64

  “SOL ROTH!” Geoff did a double take, eyes wide. “Like in the Palm Beach Downs Sollie Roth? And the dog track? And that hundred-foot Gulf Craft docked at the marina over there?”

  “Hundred and forty,” Sol said, “if you’re counting. And the Polo Club and the City Square Mall and American Reinsurance, if you need the entire résumé. Who are you, son, my new biographer?”

  “Geoff Hunter.” Champ stuck out his hand and sat across from Sol. “Of the single-lap, 1000cc superpole speed record. Two hundred fifteen miles per hour. Two twenty-two, if they could ever fix on the blur. Face to the metal, ass to the air, as they say.”

  “As who says that, son?” Sollie took Geoff’s hand a little tepidly.

  A waitress wearing a Simpsons T-shirt came up. “What can I get you boys? Mr. Roth?”

  I did my best to hide my face. Two other tables were calling for her. She rolled her eyes at Sollie. “Now you know why I drink, Mr. Roth.”

  I ordered scrambled eggs with a little cheddar thrown in. Champ ordered some kind of elaborate omelet with peppers, salsa, Jack cheese, and tortilla chips sprinkled in. A short stack of pancakes, home fries. Sollie, a soft-boiled egg on whole-wheat toast.

  We chatted for a few minutes in soft voices. About how I’d made the right move by calling him. He asked how I’d been holding up and said he was really sorry to hear about my brother. “You’re dealing with very bad people, Ned. I guess you know that now.”

  Our breakfast arrived. Sollie watched as Champ dug into his thick omelet. “Been coming here thirty years, never saw anyone order that before. That any good?”

  “Here”—Champ pushed the plate across—“it would be an honor. Try some, Mr. Roth.”

  “No, thanks,” Sol said. “I’m trying to live past noon.”

  I put down my fork and huddled close to him “So, you make any progress, Sol?”

  “Some,” he said with a shrug. He mopped his toast in the goopy egg. “Though some of what you hear is going to hurt you, kid. I know you were keen on that girl. I did a little checking around with my own sources. I’m afraid it’s not quite what you think, Neddie. Dennis Stratton wasn’t using Tess. It was the other way around.”

  “The other way around,” I said. Liz was setting him up. “What do you mean?”

  Sol took a sip of coffee. “Liz Stratton was actually behind her husband’s affair with this girl. More than behind it, Neddie, she orchestrated it. Set him up. She had the girl on a retainer.”

  I blinked back, confused. “Why would she be doing that?”

  “To discredit him,” Sol replied, spooning another packet of Cremora into his mug. “Everyone knows this Stratton marriage isn’t exactly what it seems. Liz has wanted out for a long time. But he’s got a stranglehold on her. Most of the money’s in his name. She was going to set him up and walk away with everything he’s got.”

  “You know I heard about these tarts who . . .” Geoff gobbled a forkful of omelet.

  I held him back. “So, what are you saying, Sollie? Tess was hired? Like some kind of actress . . . Or scam artist?”

  “A little more than that, kid.” Sol pulled out a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his sweater. “I’m afraid she was a professional.”

  It was a faxed copy of a police rap sheet. From Sydney, Australia. I was staring at Tess’s face. Her hair was pulled back, her eyes downcast. A different girl. The name on the rap sheet was Marty Miller. She’d been arrested several times, for selling prescription drugs and for prostitution in King’s Cross.

  “Jesus Christ.” I blinked, and sank back in the booth.

  “She was a high-class call girl, Ned. She was from Australia. That’s why there was nothing on her around here.”

  “New Sou
th Wales,” I muttered, recalling our first day on the beach.

  “Hmmph,” Geoff snorted, taking the sheet from my hand. “An Aussie. Not surprised . . .”

  A call girl. Paid to screw Dennis Stratton. Hired to do a job. My blood started to simmer. All that time I’d been thinking there was no way I deserved her—and it had all been just a sham.

  “So, he found out about her,” I said, clenching my jaw, “and had her killed.”

  “Stratton’s got people who work for him who would do just about anything, Ned,” Sol said.

  I nodded. I thought of Ellie’s doubts about the local cop, Lawson. The one who always seemed to be around Stratton. “That’s why the police are dragging their heels. They knew there was a connection between them. He owns them, right?”

  “If you want to catch him, Neddie,” Sol said, looking at me earnestly, “I own a few things, too.”

  I smiled gratefully at Sollie. Then I stared at the rap sheet again. Poor Tess. Such a beautiful face. She probably thought this was the payday of her life, too. That shimmering, hopeful look came back to me, the one I couldn’t understand. How she felt that her luck was about to change as well.

  I’m going to get him, Tess, I vowed, looking at her face. Then I dropped the rap sheet onto the table. “Marty Miller,” I said, smiling at Sol. “I didn’t even know her name.”

  Chapter 65

  DENNIS STRATTON left his office in one of the financial buildings along Royal Palm Way a little after five.

  His Bentley Azure pulled out of the garage and I started up my dingy Impala.

  I’m not entirely sure why I had the urge to follow him, but what Sollie had told me really pissed me off. I had seen Stratton in action on the terrace with Ellie. I guess I just wanted to see firsthand what this asshole was about.

  Stratton swung around at the light and continued over the bridge into West Palm. I followed, a few car lengths behind. He was busy talking on the phone. I figured even if he noticed, there was no way a guy in an old clunker like mine would register on his mental radar.