For Maria . . . everything for Maria.
THE
LACEY
CONFESSION
Richard
Greener
The Lacey Confession © 2006 by Richard Greener.
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Acknowledgments
I want to thank those who were generous enough to read portions of The Lacey Confession while it was being written, especially Barbara and Phil Ross, and Jeffrey Marlin. I am particularly indebted to Valerie Fischel, whose keen insight into my shortcomings was instrumental in helping to correct them.
Every author needs an agent, and I am fortunate to have the best, Julia Lord. I want to thank her again.
Preface
I wrote The Lacey Confession while waiting for a new heart. From its first word to its last, I was on the heart transplant list at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. For obvious reasons, when waiting for a heart you can’t ever be very far from the hospital. The call may come at any time. My time was spent almost exclusively at home, and most of that in my cozy office overlooking little Martin Lake. The experience has been, I imagine, very similar to being under house arrest. To escape, I wrote.
Throughout all this, my daughter Barbi, who would walk through walls for her father, mobilized her sisters and other co-conspirators, and secretly arranged for me to speak with many of the people I admire, respect, and enjoy. I never knew who might call or when. Each was a wonderful surprise. Some I’ve known from the past, but except for those few, all were complete strangers, an amazingly diverse group, calling me only out of the goodness of their heart. None of them had to do it. Everyone was warm, friendly, and interested to know about my upcoming transplant, particularly how I managed the awful wait. Most conversations were a few minutes, not hurried but short. But some lasted fifteen or twenty minutes. One call took up a half-hour and another almost an hour. I had a wonderful time.
I want to thank all those who called as well as those who wrote, especially the New York Mets, who were kind enough to send me a baseball signed by my favorite pitcher, Tom Seaver, and the New York Jets, who made my day with a football signed by the great Joe Namath.
Everyone should know how happy they made me and how important they were in the completion of this book. My thanks to all:
Rep. John Lewis, Bill Cosby, Monica Kaufman, Al Franken, Leon Botstein, Sen. Hillary Clinton, Ambassador Andrew Young, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Tim Russert, Jackie Mason, Rep. Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Whoopi Goldberg, Sen. Lindsay Graham, Jon Stewart, Phyllis Chesler, Sen. Fred Harris, Noam Chomsky, Robin Williams, Father Andrew Greeley, Tom Clancy, Gov. Howard Dean, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frank Torre, Terry Gross, Sen. Barack Obama, The Atlanta Braves, Sen. Russ Feingold, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., Barry Levinson, Martin Sheen, David E. Kelley, David Letterman, Clint Eastwood, Mel Brooks, Christopher Hitchens, Stanley Kutler, Bo Jackson, Oliver Stone, Blythe Danner, and the governor of my home state, Sonny Perdue.
Roswell, Georgia
May 2005
Editor’s note: Richard Greener received a heart transplant in January 2006.
THE BEGINNING
Only wise men—and some newborn fools—
say they know what’s going on.
–Harry Chapin–
Cruz Bay was Walter’s kind of town. The capital city of St. John in the American Virgin Islands is more accurately a village, much too small to ever be called a city. It’s centered on and around the island’s largest port, hugging the shore, clinging to the mountainside. The Rock, as St. John’s permanent residents call their much larger neighbor, St. Thomas, is only a short twenty-minute boat ride, but for many who live on St. John, that distance is measured in months or years, not minutes or nautical miles.
Billy’s Bar is directly across the small square that fronts the slip where the St. Thomas ferry docks. For many years Walter Sherman had spent about half his waking hours there. Breakfast nearly every morning—a little later in the day now than when he was younger—a late afternoon lunch and, from time to time, dinner too if the occasion was special enough. He could always be found sitting in the second to last seat at the far end of the bar, near the kitchen, next to the large standing fan. Time didn’t change Billy’s much. Walter liked that. The same might be said for the whole island and he liked that too. Unless someone reminded him, it was easy for Walter Sherman to forget St. John was part of the United States.
The island can only be reached by small boat, including the ferry. The big cruise ships have to make port at St. Thomas. Tourists from those floating hotel vessels, and the Rock’s other visitors, staying at the bustling resorts on St. Thomas, often take the short trip to St. John for a few hours of shopping. Some come for the national park, many more for the beaches. Some come over just for dinner and catch the last ferry back to St. Thomas. For the more serious tourists, or bushwhackers as the locals called them, those with a special liking for St. John’s calm tranquility and truly magnificent beaches, and with no interest at all in doing things like playing golf, there were the island’s two large resort hotels. Walter and his fellow permanent St. John residents frequently thanked God, and the federal government too, for the absence of a golf course anywhere on the island. It had been the Almighty, of course, who in his inspired creation of the Caribbean made the island less than nine miles long and too mountainous to accommodate a golf course, a race track, or anything resembling the cursed Disneyland or any of its growing number of cheaper imitations. Theme parks they called them. What theme was there, Walter wondered, other than spending money? As an added stroke of luck, the federal government of the United States had accepted a gift of land, comprising nearly two-thirds of the entire island, and designated it a national park. John D. Rockefeller’s middle son, Laurence, the smartest and richest of his
bunch, was the generous donor. No fool, the only thing Rockefeller kept for himself was the area called Caneel Bay—surely the loveliest part of the loveliest island—thought of by more than a few as the most beautiful spot in the world. It was here Rockefeller built the first of his famous resorts. The riffraff from the mainland, the back-slapping, heavy-drinking, cigar-smoking golfing quartets looking for an early tee time and a blackjack table, were forced to seek other venues.
In addition to the newer Westin, originally a Hyatt property, and the older Caneel Bay resorts, there are a handful of smaller hotels and guesthouses and about 400 hillside and hilltop homes, most of them for rent, all of them carrying expensive weekly rates. At high season, the island’s population of 4,000 doubles. St. John is not for the casual visitor looking for just anyplace to go on a package holiday in the Caribbean. Those seeking a taste of Europe usually go farther south to the Dutch-flavored Curacao. If excitement and adventure among the young, the rich, and the French is what they want, and if they have enough money, they go to trendy and chic St. Barts. And if they are looking for nothing more than to stay in America but get away from winter, they’ll head straight to Puerto Rico and be quite content with the hotels and casinos on Dorado Beach. St. John, on the other hand, is a place people come to, to be alone. That’s why Walter Sherman was determined to buy a home there the first time he set foot on its shore. That’s why his ex-wife, Gloria, called it St. Garbo.
This particular morning, Walter was eating his usual scrambled eggs and toast and drinking a bottle of Diet Coke. Billy stocked the beverage in glass bottles just for him. Anyone else who ordered it got some from the intricate tap system at the bar or from a can. Walter liked the feel of the small glass bottle in his hand, the fizz tickling his nose when the metal cap was popped off, and he was sure it tasted better in glass than any other way. Billy Smith liked and respected Walter as much—no more—than any man he’d ever known. It was no trouble for him to tell the Coke man to always include a couple of cases of the bottles he saved for Walter.
The standing fan, not far from Walter, turned at medium speed. A welcome cool breeze blew off the water, across the square, and into Billy’s wide-open front. The small morning crowd mostly sat at the tables shielded from the bright sunshine. Many wore their sunglasses even inside, particularly those sporting the most expensive shades. If you were going to spend three or four hundred dollars for a pair of sunglasses, Walter figured, you’d be loath to ever take them off. Little did he know, some cost twice that. He was reading the op-ed page of The New York Times and taking another bite of his lightly buttered toast when he heard her enter the bar.
Fingerprints are not the only things that give people away, stamping them with a marker those able to interpret such things could recognize. Footsteps told Walter a lot. Man or woman? Big or small? Heavy or lean? Sometimes, as well, they offered clues even to character and health. What he heard now were not the heavy footsteps of a man still wearing his mainland shoes, although he’d heard that noise before and still remembered. This time his ears picked up a sound certain to be the steps of a woman. She was headed his way. Without looking up, he instinctively guessed—decades of experience acting out in his mind involuntarily. He didn’t want to do this anymore. He no longer had any interest in things of this sort. But he couldn’t help himself. He figured her to be tall, slim, perhaps a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet. He pictured long dark hair. Painted nails. “Christ!” he caught himself, “I must be losing my fucking mind.” He didn’t have time to think about age, color, or any of a dozen other aspects he always listened for in a woman. She was upon him too quickly. The sound of her heels—he was sure they were very high heels—said she walked in a manner common to many beautiful women. The length of her stride, the time between the sound of each heel clicking as it struck the floor, told Walter Sherman this woman was long legged and before she put one foot down in front of the other, her forward leg almost crossed over the line of the one behind. He could tell that and he reminded himself, a woman who would walk that way was a woman who knew she looked good. He was sure she wore pants with her high heels. How did he know that? He could hear her inner thighs rub against each other. “The sound of corduroy?” he asked himself, pleased to note he wasn’t losing his hearing along with everything else.
He expected a confident, sexy woman. He was seldom wrong. He missed only one small detail. She did not wear corduroy. She wore jeans, skin tight and stonewashed. How she put them on was a mystery. She could have been poured in. She was a bit shorter than he guessed. With the advantage of her heels she might have made it to five-six. If she weighed one-twenty, he thought, it was only after a big meal. Her long, black, expensively straightened hair had begun to curl in the Caribbean humidity. Still it fell, across her shoulders halfway down her back and in front, almost to the tips of her breasts in front. She wore a dark blue, silk blouse; two buttons open at the top. Her bra, the edges of which he could see quite easily, was dark brown with a shiny satin finish. Her outfit was a perfect complement to her olive skin. He saw all that in spite of her feeble attempt at disguise. She had on a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low on her forehead. Big sunglasses were meant to obscure her face. She did her best, he supposed, to hide in plain sight. Still, he recognized her immediately. For a woman he knew was closer to fifty than forty she looked more like thirty. She took a man’s breath away and she was keenly aware of it. Walter was but a man.
“Hello, Walter Sherman,” she said.
“Do we know each other?” he asked, in a warm and friendly, neighborly tone. For a moment, an instant disconnected to any other, she struck him as a brown-skinned, dark-haired, tropical incarnation of Mae West. A playful yet confident woman. A woman on top. He looked up from his food and smiled, as much at himself as to her. She smiled back. Walter’s ears actually tingled. She smelled great.
“Only by reputation,” she said. “May I?” She pointed at the empty seat next to him.
“Of course.”
“You have a nice island here.”
“It’s not all mine.”
“It’s killing my hair,” she said, seated comfortably atop the wooden stool between Walter and the kitchen door. She ran her hands through the ends of her tumbling locks, gently tugging at the stray ends, lightly touching, practically caressing her pointed nipples with the tips of her long, elegant fingers. Her nails were sparkling red. She looked straight into Walter’s eyes as she did this. It stirred him. My God! he thought, for what man would it be otherwise? As if she knew what he was thinking, she let the thought register then said, firmly but in a low voice, “I need your help.” She opened a small silver case, removed a very strange looking cigarette and lit it. “Do you mind?” she asked.
Walter shook his head, still smiling all the while. He answered her first question—I need your help is always a question—in a clear and straightforward tone. “I’m sorry. I don’t work anymore.”
“Me too. At least sometimes it seems that way.”
“You’re too hard on yourself, Miss Crystal. The last I heard, you were still a big star.” She was alone. He didn’t ask, but he was tempted to ask her where her people were. She was well known to travel with an entourage fit for a head of state. Wherever she went, she attracted a crowd, a good portion of it in her employ. Walter was careful to pronounce Conchita Crystal’s name the way she liked it, Kree-STAL, rolling the r as if he too was Puerto Rican, with the emphasis solidly on the second syllable.
“¿Habla español?” she asked.
“Tengo español en mi corazon, pero inglés en mi boca.”
“Now it’s you who’s too hard on yourself, Mr. Sherman. But, if you prefer, inglés it is. Can we speak here?”
“About?”
“As I said, I need your help.” Walter started to say something—something Conchita Crystal was sure she would not want to hear. “I’m desperate, Mr. Sherman,” she said, interrupting him before he got a word out. “I’ve nowhere else to turn. You’re the only
one.”
He felt the tremble in her voice, saw that look in her eyes, a tremble and a stare he’d felt and seen so many times before in the hectic pace of nearly four decades. There came a moment, even for the richest, the most powerful and most famous, when they were undone by whatever loss they were about to spill at Walter’s feet. The fear, the dread, the surrender to melancholy—he could hear every bit of it in their voices, sense it in their demeanor. Conchita Crystal was no different from the rest.
“Please listen to me,” she pleaded. “Let me tell you why I’ve come to you. Then, if you still feel you can’t do anything, I’ll go away. I’ll understand. But, please, just hear me out.” She reached over and put her hand lightly on his wrist. “It’s matter of life and death—mine.” She paused, never breaking eye contact with him. Walter said nothing—not right away. His knees weakened. He took a long, deep breath then said, “Not here. Take a walk. Go across the square to the ferry dock. I’ll be out in a minute. Okay?”
Conchita Crystal instantly regained her composure. Walter couldn’t be sure if it was her relief at knowing he would listen to her story or if that was just what she did for a living. He certainly wasn’t about to come to any conclusion at this point. She nodded and smiled. She smiled—a smile he’d seen a thousand times, in TV commercials, on billboards, magazine covers, CDs, and in the movies. This smile, however, this one right now, was special. It was all his. She slid off her barstool, stood facing him, dropped her cigarette to the floor and stepped on it, then turned and left, the sound of her footsteps already filed away in his memory. It was all Walter could do not to watch her every step as she walked away. Conchita Crystal once and maybe still had the best-looking, most famous ass in the Western world.
He took a last forkful of eggs, a final bite of toast and finished his Diet Coke. He folded his newspaper, put it down on the bar, then got up to leave, following her as he said he would.
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