Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

It is now midday Thursday. “Three days. Come Monday morning Harry and I have to be on a plane headed back,” I tell him. “By Tuesday morning, if we haven’t found Ginnis and served him with a subpoena, my opening statement to the jury is going to be a very brief and sad story.”

“That’s not much time,” says Herman.

“Tuchio did a number on us,” says Harry.

“And that’s if we can serve him,” I tell Herman. “What I’m hoping is that maybe Ginnis will sit down and talk to us. Tell us about the letter and what was going on with Scarborough. So if you tag him, try to be as friendly as possible. See if you can stay with him until we can get there.”

“With thoughts like that, you must still believe in the Easter bunny,” says Harry. “What if Ginnis killed him? You saw the look on his face when Scarborough laid the letter on the table in the video. For a second I thought he was gonna reach out and cut his throat with the butter knife. In which case,” says Harry, “I don’t think Ginnis is going to wanna talk to us or anybody else. And if he appears in court, which I doubt, he’ll spin some yarn and say he doesn’t know anything about the letter.”

“In which case we can treat him as a hostile witness and impeach him with the video,” I tell him. “Because then we have a legal basis to bring it in, along with a witness who can tell us when and where it was taken, since his face is all over it.”

“True,” says Harry. “But what if he doesn’t appear, subpoena or no subpoena? What do you tell the jury in your opening then?”

“I’ve thought about that. If we can serve him, I’m prepared to wing it on opening. I’ll tell the jury what we know, based on the conversations with Scott and Bonguard and what’s in the video. We’ll have to do the best we can to fill in the blanks.”

“Like who gave the letter to Scarborough,” says Harry, “and what’s in it.”

“I’m prepared to tell the jury that Ginnis gave Scarborough the copy and that Ginnis has the original. I think that’s pretty clear from the video and the transcript. The contents of the letter are another matter.”

“And what if Ginnis doesn’t show and you have no witness?” says Harry.

“Then at least we have an argument for more time,” I tell him. “Our entire defense in a death-penalty case hinges on one witness, a justice of the United States Supreme Court who has been duly served with process and who refuses or has failed to appear.”

Harry mulls this in silence for a moment.

“You would have to think that every judge up the chain,” I tell him, “from Quinn to the top, would have to ponder that and pause at least for a second or two, before they vote to slip the needle into Carl’s arm.”

Harry thinks about this for only a second or so. Then he slaps the surface of the table. “Let’s go find the bastard and serve him,” he says.

The only real downside to any of this is if we can’t find Ginnis.

Herman gives us his notes including the real-estate and rental offices he hasn’t had time to check yet, along with a few private parties who have listed homes on the island for rent on the Internet. A few of these we can check by phone; the rest we’re going to have to visit. We all have cell phones, and they work. We all agree that the minute any one of us finds Ginnis, before we even move on him, the call goes out. The three of us will try to gather and get in close before one of us tries to pounce and we lose him.

Harry and I split up. He takes Herman’s rental car along with a map and heads north.

Herman gets on the phone. His task is local. If he needs wheels, he’ll use a cab. His task is to find an investigator or somebody else who can get to passport control or riffle the forms for inbound visitors.

I take the rest of the rental list, get into the car from the airport with the map from the rental company, and head south. The problem is that some of the real-estate and rental agencies that Herman called didn’t answer their phones. They were probably closed or out showing houses or property. We may have to rattle a few doors or ask around to find the agents.

I drive the island, getting lost three times on winding back roads and find four rental agents, two of them with distinct British accents, Dutch who learned their English in the U.K. I use the same story that Herman used: an emergency in the States, and I’m trying to notify the vacationers. They are all friendly and helpful, but none of them have ever heard the name Ginnis, except as an ale in a pub, and then it was spelled differently.

I drive until after dusk, checking with Harry and Herman every few hours. They are having the same success I am-none.

By nine that night, we are back in the hotel. Harry and I are dead on our feet, jet-lagged and suffering from lack of sleep. We each grab a light meal in our rooms and collapse.

We do it again the next day, Friday, early morning until dark, and come up with nothing. We are beginning to wonder if Ginnis’s wife may have rented the house under a different name, either because she knew he was in trouble or to keep the press away while he was recovering from surgery.

Saturday morning we pick up again where we left off. The morning passes with nothing. And then about one o’clock, the cell phone on my belt vibrates. It’s Herman.

“Where are you?” He’s excited.

I look at my map. “A wide spot on the road called Salina.”

“The south end of the island?” he asks. “Good. Look at your map.”

“I am.”

“See a place called Jan Thiel? It’s on the ocean, southwest edge of the island. I found Salina on my map. It’s just south of where you are.”

I search the map with my finger and find it. “I see it.”

“Head there,” he says. “What time have you got?”

I look at my watch. “A few minutes past one. What’s happening?”

“All hell’s breaking loose here,” he says. “Government square inside the fort. Media, American news crews with cameras. They’re all over the place, asking questions about Ginnis. Why the local government on the island doesn’t know there’s a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court vacationing here.”

“They didn’t know?”

“No,” says Herman. “According to what they told the press, not a clue.”

I knew the cameras would all show up, but I was hoping they would give us one more day.

“How do you know he’s at this place, Jan Thiel?”

“I don’t,” says Herman. “But his clerk, Alberto Aranda, swims there every day about noon.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because his girlfriend back in the States told one of the reporters. I heard the newsies talking about it. He calls her every day about noon from the beach. She says he swims somewhere near a sunken tug. Get your ass down there. You don’t have much time.”

“Harry is at the north end of the island,” I tell him. “He’ll never make it in time.”

“I know that.” I can hear him breathing heavily, running. “I’m catching a cab. Be there as fast as I can,” he says.

Even though I’m only a short distance away, it takes me more than twenty minutes to find the brackish backwater of the inlet and the dirt road that leads to the beach at the place on the map called Jan Thiel. The road forks at a steep hill. I take the left fork and go up and around. On my right as I skirt the hill, I can see a circular, fortresslike tower, old stone, probably planted on the top of the hill three or four centuries ago and now abandoned.

As the wheels of my car hit pavement again and I get past the brush blocking my view, I see the small harbor. There is a cargo ship of some kind tied up at one dock and a large four-masted schooner-more than a hundred feet in length, I would guess-tied off at another. There are several other, smaller sailing vessels moored in the harbor, one of them a party boat. Passengers in swimsuits are swinging from ropes out over the bow, doing dives and belly flops into the water.