The Crimes of Jordan Wise

I STOP TALKING and lean back in my chair. Talley has kept my glass filled and I'm very drunk, but I know it doesn't show. The one thing, the only thing, I haven't lost is my control while under the influence.

Talley is looking at me in a new way now. Part of his revised opinion of me is a grudging awe. The rest . . . I don't care about the rest.

"That's one hell of a story," he says.

"Meaning you don't believe it?"

"Oh, I believe it all right. The essential facts are too easy to check."

"Could be I don't care about that," I say. "Could be I made it all up to cadge free drinks from gullible tourists."

"Not with the amount of emotion you put into it. Or all the gory details about Cotler and Annalise. I've written fact and fiction both—I know one from the other."

"Details make for a better story. And emotion can be faked."

"Are you trying to unconvince me?"

"Hell, no. On the contrary. I don't want you to have any doubts."

It is late afternoon now. Brassy hot outside, sticky hot in here under Jocko's lazy fan. Sweat rolls down my cheeks, drips off my chin onto the sodden front of my shirt, but I don't bother to wipe it away. Heat and sweat have no effect on me. Nothing has much effect on me anymore.

"All right," Talley says, "so the story's true. Every word of it?"

"Every word."

"And you want to publish it."

"That's right. Is it publishable?"

"You know it is. But you don't need me to write it up for you. It can pretty much stand as you told it, in your own words, with some minor editing."

"I wouldn't know how to go about getting a book published. You do. Do whatever it takes, and you can have all the money."

"Entire advance, full royalties?"

"Every penny. I don't care about money. I have more money than I'll ever need."

He's hooked. But he says, "Before I do anything, I want the answers to a couple of questions. The first one is, Why me?"

"Why not you? You're the only writer I've ever met. I knew that's what you were before you approached me. Jocko told me the last time you came in. If you hadn't sat down with me today, I'd've gone to you."

"So spilling your guts wasn't spur-of-the-moment."

"Not hardly. Been on my mind for a while now."

"Okay. Second question: Why do you want your story published? Now, after all these years?"

I roll some Arundel around on my tongue, savoring the taste. Outside, the sun is coming low and the bay is starting to darken. Later tonight, after moonrise, the water will be as black as cold tar and moonlight and starlight and nightlights on the anchored boats will paint it in shiny gold and shimmering quicksilver.

Talley says, "It can't be published anonymously—you'd have to use your real name. As soon as the book comes out, you'U be arrested and tried, and there's not much doubt you'll be convicted. There're no statutes of limitations on federal crimes or on murder. And murder could be proved if the authorities care enough to go digging in the old French cemetery. You must know all this."

"I know it."

"Then why confess?"

"Is that what you think this is, a confession?"

"Isn't it? A way to bring yourself more punishment?"

"More punishment?"

"Come on, Wise. Those three crimes of yours weren't so damn perfect. You may not have been cought and prosecuted for any of them, but that doesn't mean you got off scot free. The woman you committed the first one for betrayed you not once but three times. You lost your only friend, your boat, your love of the sea, your sexual ability, and your zest for life. You've got the deaths of two people on your conscience. And all the stolen money hasn't kept you from spending the past twenty years on a drunken downhill spiral. What's all of that, if not punishment?"

"Bad luck?" I say.

"Bullshit," Talley says.

I smile a little. "So you think I'm tired of living with guilt and I just don't care any more what happens to me. You think I want to purge myself, cleanse my soul before I die."

"Well?"

"You're dead wrong," I say. "I don't feel any guilt and I never have. I doubt I've got much of a soul left to cleanse, if I ever had one in the first place. I'm not sorry for any of it, except for driving Bone away and losing my passion for the sea. Punishment? Confession? No way."

"Then what the devil is this all about?"

"I'm sixty-two years old and I drink a liter of rum a day. They say a sick animal knows when its time is short. Well, humans can intuit, too. I don't have much life left in me, a couple of years at the outside. I've come to terms with that—I'm not afraid of dying. All I want is to live long enough to see my story published."

Talley frowns. He's getting it now.

"The only things that lift my life above the mediocrity of millions of other lives," I say, "are my three crimes. Not one, not two, but three technically perfect crimes. They make me special, they give my time on this earth some meaning and importance. If I took them to the grave with me, nobody would ever know the full scope of what I've done. Jordan Wise would be nothing more than a 'Whatever happened to that embezzler?' footnote in some true-crime book. This way, Jordan Wise is Somebody with a capital 'S.' This way, he'll be remembered."

"Your little piece of immortality."

"That's it. Exactly."

"You know something, Wise?" Talley says. "Annalise's last words to you were right on. You are a son of a bitch."

"Damn right," I say. "But I'm a special son of a bitch. One of a kind. That's the whole point, isn't it?"

He shakes his head, gathers up his pocket recorder, gets to his feet. "I'll need to check a few things and then contact my agent," he says. "Then we'll have another talk."

"Any time. You know where to find me."

Talley goes away, and after a while Jocko brings me a fresh glass of rum. He says, "What you staring at out there, mon?"

"The sunset," I say. "Look at those colors. Scarlet, burgundy, old rose. And the way the light comes through that bank of clouds."

"Pretty much the same like always."

"No, you're wrong. This is a special sunset, Jocko. A special sunset for a special son of a bitch."

He laughs. I laugh, too.

I say what I'm thinking as the colors and the light shift and coalesce: "It was worth it."

"What was, mon?"

"Everything. For the sunsets and the Arundel. And the time I had with Bone. It was worth it and I'd do it all again if I had the chance."

Jocko laughs.

This time I don't laugh with him.