Lifeguard

Chapter 112

EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER…

The gate of the federal detention center up in Coleman buzzed open, and I walked out into the Florida sun a free man.

All I carried with me was my BUM Equipment bag containing my things, and a computer case slung over one shoulder. I stepped out into the courtyard in front of the prison and shielded my eyes. And just like in the movies, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do next.

I’d spent the past sixteen months in Coleman’s minimum-security block (six months reduced for good behavior) among the tax cheats, financial scammers, and rich-boy drug offenders of the world. Along the way, I had managed to get most of the way to a master’s degree from the University of South Florida in social education. Turns out I had this talent.

I could speak to a bunch of juvies and social misfits about to make the same choices I had, and they actually listened to me. I guess that’s what losing your best friends and your brother and sixteen months in federal prison give you. Life lessons. Anyway, what the hell was I going to do with myself? Go back to being a lifeguard?

I scanned the faces of a few waiting people. Right now, there was only one question I wanted answered.

Was she there?

Ellie had visited regularly when I started serving my term. Almost every Sunday she’d drive up, with books and DVDs and cute notes, marking off the weeks. Coleman was only a couple of hours’ drive from Delray. We made this date: September 19, 2005. The day I’d be getting out. Today.

She always joked she’d come pick me up in a minivan, like the day we met. It didn’t matter that I was going to have this record and she was still working for the FBI. It would distinguish her, Ellie said with a laugh. Make her stand apart from the organizational clutter. She’d be the only agent dating a guy she had put away.

You can count on it, Ellie said.

Then the Bureau actually offered her this promotion. They transferred her back to New York. Head of the International Art Theft office there. A big move up. A lot of overseas travel. The visits started going from every week to every month. Then last spring, they sort of came to a stop.

Oh, we e-mailed each other a few times a week and talked on the phone. She told me that she was still rooting for me and that she was proud of what I was doing. She always knew I’d make something of myself. But I could detect a shift in her voice. Ellie was smart and a winner and had even been on the morning news shows after the case. As September grew close, I got this e-mail that she might have to be out of the country. I didn’t want to push it. Dreams change. That’s what prison does. As the days wound down I decided, if she was there, well, that’s where I would pick up from. I’d be the happiest guy in south Florida. If not…well, we were both different people now.

There was a taxi and a couple of cars parked in the waiting area in front of the prison. A young Latino family stepped forward excitedly for someone else.

No Ellie. I didn’t see a minivan anywhere.

But there was something parked just outside the fence at the end of the long drive that did cause me to smile.

A familiar light green Caddie. One of Sollie’s cars.

And leaning on the hood was a guy with his legs extended and crossed, wearing jeans and a navy blazer.

Orange hair.

“I know it’s not exactly what you were hoping for, mate,” Champ said, smiling contritely, “but you look like a guy who could use a ride home.”

I stood there looking at him on the hot steaming pavement, and my eyes started to well. I hadn’t seen Champ since I’d gone inside. He’d spent six weeks in the hospital. A punctured spleen and lung, only one kidney. The bullet had ricocheted off his spine. Ellie had told me he’d never race again.

I picked up my bags and walked over. I asked, “So, just where’s home?”

“The Kiwis have a phrase: home’s where the women snore and the beer’s free. Tonight, we’re talking my couch.”

We threw our arms around each other, gave each other a long embrace. “You look good, Champ. I always said you cleaned up well.”

“I’m working for Mr. Roth now. He bought this Kawasaki distributorship on Okeechobee…” He handed me a business card. Geoff Hunter. FORMER WSB WORLD CHAMPION. SALES ASSOCIATE. “If you can’t race ’em, you might as well sell the damn things.”

Geoff took the bag from me. “What do you say we boogie, mate? This old bus here gives me the willies. Never did feel safe driving anything with a roof and four wheels.”

I climbed in the front passenger seat as Geoff tossed my bags in the trunk. Then he eased his still-stiff body behind the wheel. “Let’s see,” he said, fiddling around with the ignition key, “I have a vague recollection how this is done…”

He revved the engine hard and pulled away from the curb with a start. I turned and found myself looking through the rear window one last time, hoping for something that I knew wasn’t meant to be. The towers of the Coleman Detention Center receded, and with them, part of my own hopes and dreams.

Champ hit the gas and the twenty-year-old Caddie revved into some new gear that had probably lain dormant for a long time. He looked over and winked, impressed. “Whadya say we hit the turnpike, mate? Let’s check out what this old bird can really do.”

Chapter 113

SOLLIE SENT FOR ME the next morning.

When I got to the house he was watching CNN in the sunroom off the pool. He looked a little older, a little paler, if that was possible, but his eyes lit up brightly when he saw me come in. “Neddie… It’s good to see you, boy.”

Though he never visited me in Coleman, Sollie had been watching out for me. He set me up with the dean of graduate programs at South Florida, sent me books and the computer, and assured the parole board I’d have a job with him, if I wanted it, upon my release. He also sent me a nice note of condolence when he heard my dad had died.

“You’re lookin’ good, kid.” He shook my hand and patted me on the back. “These institutions must be like Ritz Carl-tons now.”

“Tennis, mah-jongg, canasta…” I said. I tapped my behind. “Skid burns from the waterslide,” I said with a smile.

“You still play gin?”

“Only for Cokes and commissary vouchers lately.”

“That’s okay.” He took my arm. “We’ll start a new tab. C’mon, walk me out to the deck.”

We went outside. Sol was in a white button-down shirt tucked neatly into light blue golf pants. We sat at one of the card tables around the pool. He took out a deck and started to shuffle. “I was sorry to hear about your dad, Ned. I was glad you got to see him that time before he died.”

“Thanks, Sol,” I said. “It was good advice.”

“I always gave you good advice, kid.” He cut the deck. “And you always followed it. Except for that little escapade up on the roof of the Breakers. But I guess everything worked out fine. Everyone got what they wanted in the end.”

“And what was it you wanted, Sol?” I looked at him.

“Justice, kid, just like you.” He slowly dealt out the cards.

I didn’t pick them up. I just sat there, staring at him. Then I put my hand on his as he went to turn over the play card. “I want you to know, Sol, I never told anyone. Not even Ellie.”

Sollie stopped. He tapped his cards and pressed them, facedown. “You mean about the Gaume? How I knew all that stuff was written on the back? That’s good, Ned. I guess that sorta makes us even, right?”

“No, Sol,” I said, looking at him closely, “not even at all.” I was thinking about Dave. And Mickey and Barney and Bobby and Dee. Murdered for something they never had. “You’re Gachet, aren’t you? You stole the Gaume?”

Sol stared at me with those hooded gray eyes, then he hunched his shoulders like a guilty child. “I guess I owe you some answers, don’t I, son?”

For the first time I realized I had totally underestimated Sollie. That comment he made once, about Stratton believing he was the biggest fish in the pond but there always being someone bigger.

I was staring at him now.

“I’m going to show you something once, Ned,” Sol said, putting down the cards, “and for your silence ever after I’m going to pay you a lot of money. Every penny you thought you were going to make that day when you went to meet your friends.”

I tried to remain calm.

“That’s a million dollars, Ned, if I remember right. And while we’re at it, how about another for your friends, and another for Dave. That’s three million, Ned. I can’t repay you for what happened to them. I can’t bring back what’s been done. I’m an old man. Money’s all I have, these days…Well, not entirely…”

There was a sparkle in Sol’s eyes. He got up from the card table. “Come on.”

I got up and Sol led me to a part of the house I’d never been in before. To an office off his bedroom wing. He opened a plain wooden door I never would’ve figured was more than a closet. But it faced another door. A keypad on the wall.

With his skinny fingers, Sol punched in a code. Suddenly the second door slid open. It was an elevator. Sol motioned me in. Then he punched in another code. The elevator closed and we began to go down.

A few seconds later the elevator stopped and the door opened automatically. There was a small outer room with mirrored walls and another door, solid steel. Sol pushed a button and a metal shield slid back, revealing a small screen. He placed his palm onto the screen. There was a little flash, then a green light, and the steel door buzzed.

Sol held my arm. “Hold your breath, Neddie. You’re about to see one of the last great wonders of the world.”

Chapter 114

WE STEPPED INTO a large, beautifully lit room. Plush carpet, gorgeous molding on the ceiling surrounding a recessed dome. The only furniture was four high-back leather chairs in the center, each chair facing a wall.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

There were paintings on the walls. Eight of them. Masterpieces.

I was no expert, but I could tell the artists without having to look in a book. Rembrandt. Monet.

A Nativity scene. Michelangelo.

Images indelibly imprinted in my brain. All priceless.

One of the last, great wonders of the world!

“Jesus, Sol,” I said, looking around wide-eyed, “you have been a busy fucking bee.”

“C’mere…” Sol took me by the arm. On a wooden easel, set in the center of the room, I saw what I had only heard described before. In a simple gold frame. A washerwoman in a gray dress. At a basin. Her back to the viewer. A ray of gentle light illuminating her as she worked. I noticed the signature at the bottom.

Henri Gaume.

In every direction there were masterpieces. Another Rembrandt. A Chagall. I shrugged at Sol. “Why this?”

Sol stepped over to the painting. He gently lifted the canvas. To my shock, there was another painting hidden behind it. Something I recognized. A man sitting at a table in a garden. Fuzzy red hair peeking from under his white cap, sharp blue eyes. There was a thin, wise look on his face, but his eyes were cast in a melancholy frown. My own eyes stretched wide.

“Ned,” Sol said, and stepped back, “I want you to meet Dr. Gachet.”

Chapter 115

I BLINKED, fixing my eyes on the sad, hunched man. It was a little different from the likeness I had seen in the book Dave left me. But it was unmistakably the van Gogh. Hidden, all this time, beneath the Gaume.

“The missing Dr. Gachet,” Sol announced proudly. “Van Gogh painted two portraits of Gachet in the last month of his life. This one he gave to his landlord, and it spent the last hundred years in an attic in Auvers. It came to Stratton’s attention.”

“I was right,” I muttered, anger building up in my chest. My brother and my friends had died for this thing. And Sollie had it all along.

“No,” Sol said, shaking his head, “Liz stole the painting, Ned. She found out about the phony heist and came to me. I’ve known her family a long time. She intended to blackmail him. I’m not sure she even knew what was important about it. Only that Dennis treasured it above all else and she wanted to hurt him.”

“Liz…?”

“With Lawson’s help. When the police first responded to the alarm.”

Now I was reeling. I pictured the tall Palm Beach detective who Ellie thought was Stratton’s man. “Lawson? Lawson works for you?”

“Detective Vern Lawson works for the town of Palm Beach, Ned,” Sol said, shrugging. “Let’s just say now and then he keeps me informed.”

I stared at Sollie with a new clarity. Like someone you thought you knew but now saw in a different light.

“Look around you, Ned. You see that Vermeer. The Cloth Weavers. It’s thought to have been missing since the 1700s. Only it wasn’t missing. It was just in private hands. And The Death of Isaac, that Rembrandt. It was referred to only in his letters. No one’s even sure it exists. It sat undetected in a chapel in Antwerp for three hundred years. That’s the ultimate beauty of these treasures. No one even knows they’re here.”

I couldn’t do anything but stare in amazement.

“Now the Michelangelo over there…” Sol nodded approvingly, “That was hard to find.”

There was a space on the wall between the Rembrandt and the Vermeer. “Here, help me,” Sol said, and lifted the Gachet. I took it from him and hung it on the wall between two other masterpieces. We both stepped back.

“I know you won’t understand this, son, but for me, this completes the journey of my life.

“I can offer you your old job back, but as a man of some means now, I suspect there’re other things you want to do with your life. Can I give you some advice?”

“Why not?” I said with a shrug.

“If I were you, I would go to the Camille Bay Resort in the Cayman Islands. There’s a check for the first million dollars waiting for you there. As long as this remains our little secret, they’ll be another check every month. Thirty-five thousand dollars for five years wired to the same account. That should last longer than me. Of course, if you have second thoughts and the police happen to find their way down here, we’ll consider our accounts cleared.”

Then the two of us didn’t say anything for a while. We just stared at the missing Gachet. The swirling brushstrokes, the sad, knowing blue eyes. And suddenly I thought I saw something in them, as if the old doctor were smiling at me.

“So, Neddie, whaddya think?” Sol stared at the Gachet, his hands behind his back.

“I don’t know…” I cocked my head. “A little crooked. To the left.”

“My thoughts exactly, kid.” Sol Roth smiled.

Chapter 116

THE FOLLOWING DAY I caught a plane for George Town on Grand Cayman Island. A blue island taxi took me along the beach-lined coast to the Camille Bay Resort.

Just as Sollie said, there was a room reserved in my name. Not exactly a room, but an incredible thatched-roof bungalow down by the beach, shaded by tall, swaying palm trees, with my own little private pool.

I put down my travel bag and stared out at the perfect turquoise sea.

On the desk, my eye came upon two sealed envelopes propped against the phone with my name on them.

The first was a welcome note from A. George McWilliams, the manager, with a basket of fruit, advising me that as a guest of Mr. Sol Roth, I should feel free to call on him at any time.

The second contained a deposit slip from the Royal Cayman Bank in my name for the sum of one million dollars.

A million dollars.

I sat down. I stared at the slip and checked the name one more time, just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Ned Kelly. A bank account made out to my name. All those beautiful zeros.

Jesus, I was rich.

I looked around, at the breathtaking view and the lavish room, at the basket of bananas and mangoes and grapes, at the expensive tiled floor, and it sort of hit me: I could afford this now. I wasn’t there to clean the pool. I wasn’t dreaming.

Why wasn’t I jumping for joy?

My mind drifted to being in my old Bonneville two years before, after triggering those alarms. I was about to make the biggest score of my life, right? I was dreaming of sipping orange martinis with Tess on some fancy yacht. A million dollars in the bank.

And now I had it. I had my million dollars. More. I had the palm trees and the cove. I could buy that yacht, or at least rent one. In a twisted, ironic way, everything had come true. I could do anything I wanted in life.

And I didn’t feel a thing.

I sat there at the desk, and that’s when my eye fixed on something else right in front of me.

Something I’d been staring at, more like staring through, next to the ripped-open envelopes. Hesitantly, I picked it up.

It was one of those old Matchbox toys, a replica of a car. Except this one wasn’t a car at all.

It was a little Dodge minivan.

Chapter 117

“YOU KNOW HOW HARD it is to find a real one of those down here?” Ellie’s voice came from behind me.

I spun around. She was standing there, nicely tanned, in a denim skirt and a pink tank top. She was sort of squinting into the sun that was setting behind me, her freckles almost bouncing off her cheeks. My heart flared, like an engine starting to rev.

“The last time I felt like this,” I said, “an hour later, my whole life fell apart.”

“Mine, too,” Ellie said.

“You didn’t come,” I said, pretending to be hurt.

“I said I was going to be out of the country,” Ellie said. “And here I am.” She took a step toward me.

“I had to ride two hours back to Palm Beach with Champ doing wheelies in a classic twenty-year-old Caddie. You know what torture that is? Worse than prison.”

She took another step. “Poor boy.”

I held out the little minivan in my palm. “Nice touch,” I said. “It, uh, just doesn’t go anywhere.”

“Oh, yes, it does, Ned,” Ellie said, her eyes liquid and wide. She cupped her hands over her heart. “It goes right here.”

“Jesus, Ellie.” I couldn’t hold back any longer. I reached out and put my arms around her. I hugged Ellie as tightly as I could. Her heart was beating like a little bird’s. I bent down and kissed her.

“This isn’t going to play very well with the Bureau,” I said when we came apart.

“Screw the Bureau,” Ellie said. “I quit.”

I kissed her again. I stroked her hair and pressed her head close to my chest. I wanted to tell her about Sol. What I’d seen at the house. His masterpieces. The missing Gachet. It was killing me. If there was anyone on this earth who deserved to know, it was Ellie.

But as Sol said, I was good at taking advice.

“So, what’re we going to do now?” I asked her. “Bank on my master’s degree?”

“Now? Now we’re going to take a walk on the beach, and I hope you’re gonna do something romantic, like ask me if I want to marry you.”

“Do you want to marry me, Ellie?”

“Not here. Out there. And then maybe we’ll talk a bit about how we’re gonna spend the rest of our lives. Straight talk, Ned. No games, not anymore.”

So we took a walk on the beach. And I asked her. And she said yes. And for the longest time we didn’t say another word. We just walked in the surf and watched the setting sun in paradise.

And the thought crept into my head that it might be pretty cool for a guy like me to be married to an ex-special agent of the FBI…

Of course, I was thinking Ellie might be thinking the same thing, about Ned Kelly… the outlaw.