Stuart Woods - Dead In The Water

"Anything else?"

"Anything else you can possibly think of. You understand the situation now and something of what I need. If I'm going to get this woman off I'm pretty much going to have to prove that she didn't do it."

"That's impossible," Cantor said. "There were no witnesses."

"I'm going to have to do it anyway."

"What airline goes to the Canaries?"

"I haven't the faintest idea; call my secretary and tell her to book it for you, tonight if possible."

"Right. Anything else?"

"Yes, I want you to dig up everything you can on Paul Manning for me-library, Internet, credit report, criminal record, military record, anything you possibly can before you leave for Las Palmas. FedEx it to me here." He gave Cantor the address and phone and fax numbers. "If you can think of any other avenue to pursue, pursue it; if you need outside help, hire it; if you have any ideas for me, fax them, okay?"

"I'm on it," Cantor said, then hung up.

Stone called his secretary. "Hi, Alma."

"Hi, Stone. I saw Arrington this morning; why is she still here?"

"Don't ask; she's not coming. I'm going to be busy down here for at least another week, so scrub anything I've scheduled through the middle of next week-reschedule or tell them I'll call as soon as I'm back."

"Okay."

"Any calls or correspondence worth bothering with?"

"Nothing that won't wait until you're back."

"Oh; call one of the judges' clerks and find out where they buy robes, then get one in my size and FedEx it to me."

"You doing some judging down there?"

"I'll explain later. Is Arrington upstairs?"

"She was on the way out when I saw her; a limo was waiting for her."

"I'll call her later, then." He gave her his address and numbers. "You can always leave a message at the bar if I'm not here. I'm still sleeping on the boat; it's all the use I'm getting out of it."

"Okay; anything else?"

"Oh, I almost forgot: Bob Cantor is going to call you in a minute about some travel arrangements. Get him on a plane tonight, if possible, and give him a thousand dollars in cash for expenses. Anything else he needs, get it for him, all right?"

"All right."

Stone hung up. He felt a little better now that he was actually doing something about the mess he was in. He went back downstairs just as Allison was saying goodbye to the businessman.

"Who was that?" he asked.

"An investigator from Paul's insurance company. If we need any cash for legal expenses, it'll be in my bank account in Greenwich shortly."

"Good; we ought to give Leslie Hewitt his fee up front; it's usual in this kind of case." "He's such a sweet old man,"she said. "I just loved him."

"Yeah," Stone said. "Allison," he said, taking her arm and leading her to a table, "you and I have to talk, and right now."

"Sure," she said. "You're looking pretty grim."

"I'm feeling pretty grim, and I'm going to tell you why." He pulled out a chair for her and sat her down, then took a deep breath and started in.

Stone sat her down and talked to her. "I don't have time to be gentle about this or pull any punches, so here's your position as I see it. This Sir Winston Sutherland has it in for you, apparently because he thinks it will help him politically. He somehow engineered an open verdict in the coroner's jury, which gave him a legal basis for charging you with Paul's murder. Now you're going to be tried, and there's nothing I can do to stop it."

"Surely any reasonable jury will acquit me," Allison said. "I don't really have anything to worry about, do I?"

"Allison, I don't know if we're going to have a reasonable jury. The judge picks the panel, and no objection from me is going to stand; the jury may be all or mostly black, and they may or may not be more likely to convict a white person, I don't know. All I know is that this is a capital offense."

"You mean I could get the death penalty?"

"Yes, and the way things apparently work on this island, if you're convicted there's no other penalty you could expect to get."

Allison stared at him, her mouth open. "Are you serious?" she managed to ask.

"Perfectly serious. What's more, there's no lengthy appeals process available; the only appeal is to the prime minister, and he apparently acts on appeals very quickly."

"How quickly are we talking about?"

"The appeal must be lodged within twenty-four hours after the trial ends, and he normally acts on it within twenty-four hours after that."

"Let's look at the worst case," she said. "I'm tried on Monday-how long is that likely to last?"

"The way things are done here, no more than a day, possibly two."

"Then if I'm convicted on Monday, the appeal has to be filed on Tuesday, and the prime minister would either grant or deny it on Wednesday. If he denies it, then I would be… How do they do it?"

"Hanging."

"I could be hanged…when?"

"The day after the prime minister acts."

She swallowed hard. "So by a week from Thursday I could be dead?"

"Worst case."

She put her elbows on the table and her face in her hands."What can we do?"

"Put on the best defense we can, in the circumstances. I had wanted to bring in top barrister from London, but the judge has precluded that by making Leslie Hewitt the counsel and me his assistant,"

"Isn't there anything else we can do?"

"There are two ways we can go: I've already said that we have to put on the best defense that we can, and I've got somebody in New York working on that now. He's leaving for the Canaries right away to see what he can find to help us there. Did you make any friends while you were there? Someone who might testify as to your relationship with Paul?"

"No, not really; we pretty much stayed to ourselves. What's the other thing we can do." "Well, we know that Sir Winston somehow finds it politically desirable to try you On this charge; what we might be able to do is make it politically undesirable for him to convict you, or, if he should, to make it desirable for the prime minister to uphold your appeal."

"How do we do that?"

"By letting the press know about your predicament."

"On this island? What press?"

"Not here; in New York, in London; wherever people read newspapers or watch TV."

"You want me to become famous?"

"Yes."

She shook her head. "I just don't see how that's going to help."

Stone spread a hand as though he were tracking a headline. "BEAUTIFUL BLOND AMERICAN GIRL LOSES HUSBAND AT SEA! CONNIVING POLITICIAN CHARGES HER WITH MURDER IN BACKWATER ISLAND NATION!!! It's called marshaling public opinion; it might bring pressure to bear."

"How do we accomplish this?"

"I'll call New York and get a public relations firm involved. Can you afford that?"

"How much?"

"I'm no expert at this, but I should think fifty to a hundred thousand dollars would go a long way toward accomplishing what we want. Woodman and Weld would hire and instruct them, and you'd have to pay their fees, too. Will the insurance money cover it?"

"Yes," she said, but she looked doubtful.

"What's the problem?"

She shrugged. "I just don't know if I want to be that kind of celebrity. I'm really a very private person."

"Allison, let me put this to you as strongly as I can. If we don't do something you're going to be a very dead private person. In St.Marks, Sir Winston holds all the cards; he's in control. But he can't control the rest of the world. This island subsists mostly on tourism; if he wants to become prime minister he's not going to want somebody telling the world's tourists that if they come to St.Marks they're liable to be arrested, tried, and hanged on spurious charges. That translates into a lot of empty hotel rooms and a catastrophic loss of revenue for the government."